Do rational messages (vs emotional messages) lead to a
greater reduction in disgust towards lab meat and a
subsequent increase in the social acceptance of lab meat?
Author: J.D. Leuverink
Do rational messages (vs emotional messages) lead to a
greater reduction in disgust towards lab meat and a
subsequent increase in the social acceptance of lab meat?
Abstract
Lab meat has the potential to become a sustainable food provision in the future. However, acceptance of lab meat could be hindered by initial reactions of disgust. Disgust towards lab meat might be reduced by informational messages employing rational or emotional persuasion, in turn increasing acceptance. This study researched whether such messages can induce these predicted outcomes, and whether a
differential effect exists between the two message types. In an online survey, participants were exposed to either a rational or emotional informational message and the effects on disgust and acceptance were examined. The relationship between message type (rational vs emotional) and acceptance was found not to be mediated by disgust. A significant negative relationship between disgust and acceptance was found. Furthermore, the study found indication that both rational and emotional messages could be effective in driving down disgust and increasing acceptance, but no differential effect between the two message types existed in promoting lab meat. Thus, lab meat promoters could focus on addressing disgust to increase acceptance of lab meat, but whether rational and emotional messages are adequate to that end deserves more research. Recommendations for future research are provided.
Author: J.D. Leuverink
Student number: 2925257
Department: Faculty of Economics and Business
Qualification: Master’s Thesis
Completion date: 14-06-2020
First Supervisor: J.A. Koch (MSc.)
Second Supervisor: J.W. Bolderdijk (Dr.)
Third Supervisor: F. Eggers (Dr.)
Table of contents
Table of contents 1
Introduction 2
Literature review 5
Disgust 5
Persuasive arguments and disgust 6
Disgust and acceptance 11
Persuasive arguments and acceptance 12
Research methodology 14 Participants 14 Method 14 Analyses 16 Discussion 19 Results 19 Limitations 21 Conclusion 21 References 23 Appendices 28
Appendix 1. General introduction to lab meat 28
Appendix 2. Persuasive messages 29
Appendix 3. Persuasive message (rational) with references 31 Appendix 4. Discrete emotion questionnaire by Harmon-Jones et al. 2016 32
Introduction
With an ever-increasing global population, concerns about sustainable meat production are emerging (Sharma et al., 2015). The issue of geographical limits, i.e. the amount of land that can be dedicated to farm animals being finite, exacerbates the problem.
Simultaneously, increases in the middle classes in developing countries leads to larger proportions of the population demanding meat (Delgado, 2003; Pica-Ciamarra & Otte, 2011). Current practices of enhancing meat production such as selective breeding, disease management and hormonal manipulation through diets or injection (Allan & Smith, 2008; Fraser et al., 2001), might reach their biological limits someday. Moreover, the
conventional meat industry takes a heavy toll on the wellbeing of the environment (Bhat & Bhat, 2011). Therefore new, more environmentally friendly and sensible solutions
surpassing these limits ought to be introduced to achieve a situation of sustainable food provision. A promising innovation is the ‘cultivation’ of artificial meat, i.e. meat produced in a lab from animal stem cells rather than producing meat by growing animals at farms (Bhat et al., 2015).
Although the concept of lab meat was suggested as early as the 1930s (Bhat et al., 2015), it would not be realised until 2013, when a burger was grown utilizing bovine stem cells (Kadim et al., 2015; Post, 2014). This first cell-based burger was created in a lab and put on trial before a tasting panel broadcasted on television (Post, 2014). The verdict was
Shoulders, 2013). Thus, lab meat holds a promising proposition and brings a bright prospect for sustainable food provision in the future.
In spite of these favourable characteristics of lab meat, it might encounter limited approval among society, as noted by Verbeke et al. (2015). Feelings of disgust and
unnaturalness were found to be fundamental in consumers' initial response to being introduced to the concept of lab meat in three European countries (Verbeke et al., 2015). Similarly, Hopkins (2015) also states that disgust poses a critical concern to the acceptance of lab meat. Furthermore, Bhat et al. (2015) argue that social unacceptance stemming from issues such as moral and legal contemplations and perceived unnaturalness of the meat hamper the public adoption. Additionally, Bhat et al. (2015) suggest that the limited sensory qualities are a potential barrier. Hocquette (2016) found similar inhibitions related to the unnatural nature, high costs and limited sensory characteristics of lab meat. Furthermore, unawareness and insufficient elaborate information provision on lab meat could hinder the acceptance according to Meyers and Abrams (2010). The way information on lab meat is framed is incomplete and provides limited knowledge on the benefits of security and nutritional value of lab meat (Meyers and Abrams, 2010). Providing more comprehensive, academically supported, information is therefore critical to elevate the public understanding and surpass this barrier.
widespread acceptance of lab meat and could be a valuable addition to the literature. Persuasive arguments could be presented in two ways by framing - rational and emotional - with each their own properties for persuasive power (Rosselli et al., 1995). Framing can affect emotional responses (Gross & D’Ambrosio, 2014), and affect-based attitudes (e.g. disgust) can be changed by affective (i.e. emotional) and cognitive (i.e. rational) means of persuasion (Edwards, 1990). Furthermore, Fabrigar & Petty (1999) state that affective and cognitive persuasion have a different influence on attitudes.
Rational and emotional messages can be employed to convince individuals (Cacioppo & Petty, 1981; Pallak et al., 1983; Batra & Ray, 1986). Rational messages are based on arguments and reasoning, whereas emotional messages involve feelings and experiential aspects to change one’s mind (Albers-Miller & Stafford, 1999). Moreover, Leonidou & Leonidou (2009) suggest that persuasive power of rational and emotional messages differ: the former rely on thorough and comparative arguments, while the latter are better served by an appropriate affective magnitude and issue-relevancy. Although both types of
persuasive arguments can be expected to affect disgust (e.g. Millar & Millar, 1990; Fabrigar & Petty, 1999; Edwards, 1990), rational arguments are potentially more befitting to
decrease disgust towards lab meat specifically, an issue which will be elaborated upon in the literature review. Therefore, the differential effect of these two types of argument types and their effect on disgust and the ensuing positive change in acceptance of lab meat will be investigated. Formally, this can be formulated into the research question: Do
Literature review
Disgust
Disgust can be defined as ‘revulsion at the prospect of (oral) incorporation of an offensive object. The offensive objects are contaminants; that is, if they even briefly contact an acceptable food, they tend to render that food unacceptable’ (Rozin & Fallon 1987, p. 23). According to this definition, the food avoidant behaviour is not mainly instigated by taste, but by being aware of the origin of a food (Haidt et al., 1994). Indeed, disgust is acknowledged as one of the basic emotions with identifiable features such as a particular facial expression, an accompanying behaviour (avoidance of the offensive object), a particular physiological effect (nausea) and the typical feeling state of revulsion (Rozin & Fallon, 1987). Disgust prevents harmful substances from entering the body (e.g. closing of the mouth and nose) and prompt removal of a substance if an ingested substance is
appraised as harmful (Olatunji & Sawchuk, 2005). According to Rozin et al. (2008), disgusting objects are unappetizing and hazardous, and activating disgust is based on the possibility to ingest the object, the offensiveness of the object and contamination by the object.
Furthermore, synthesizing categories of affective responses, Batra & Ray (1986) state that disgust includes feelings such as dislike, contempt and irritation (something is ‘stupid’ or ‘ridiculous’). Besides, Haidt et al. (1997) state that disgust is activated more by worries about a food's origin (‘what is it’, ‘where has it been’) than by sensory characteristics of foods. This stresses the importance of reducing the unawareness-unfamiliarity issue (Bhat et al., 2015), which underlies the concerns about lab meat’s origin.
Fallon (1987), there are three categories of disgust induced food rejection.
‘Sensory-affective’ relates to negative experiences registered by the senses (e.g. bad taste or smell), ‘Anticipation of harm following ingestion’ refers to expected short- and long-term negative health consequences after eating a food and ‘ideational rejection’ is based on the food’s origin.
Disgust is not experienced on a universal level in response to a certain offensive object, there are individual differences in disgust sensitivity (Haidt et al., 1994). Research by Egolf et al. (2018) showed that older individuals reported higher disgust sensitivity scores than younger individuals, whilst women were also found to be more disgust sensitive than men. Furthermore, research suggests that vegetarians can be disgusted by meat (Rozin et al., 1997; Amato & Partridge, 1989) and additional research suggest that vegetarians are more disgusted by lab meat than meat eaters (Pluhar, 2010).
Persuasive arguments and disgust
protecting against dangerous food. This also supports the rationale that disgust is to be diminished via an emotional appeal. Furthermore, according to Zajonc (1980) affective responses occupy an empowered position over cognitive responses, as humans can be inclined to ‘go with their gut’ more than trusting findings from objective information. Besides, Tiedens & Linton (2001) found that certainty-based emotions (e.g. disgust) foster heuristic (i.e. emotional) processing. Lastly, Ray & Batra (1983) argue that emotional appeals can be an effective persuasion method for four reasons: emotional appeals are more attention grabbing (1), can increase the level of processing (2), stimulate more positive evaluation of the message content (3) and may induce higher recall levels (4). By grabbing the reader’s attention in a more captivating way, combined with high levels of mental processing, the message might achieve recognition better than a rational appeal. Meanwhile, point three ameliorates the assessment of the message and could stimulate a decrease in disgust and point four could protect against gradual degradation of the lowered disgust effect. The discussion above suggests that emotional messages can decrease the disgust towards lab meat.
Rational appeals Emotional appeals
Effectiveness Exclusivity Popularity*
Convenience True to tradition Magic
Cheapness Pleasure Relaxation
Naturalness* Youth Maturity
Sophistication Modesty Morality
Productivity Openness Humility
Obedience Adventure Fragility
Independence Freedom Indomitable
Health* Abjection Carelessness
Longevity Status Sexuality
Modernity Upholding Protection
Use of technologies* Family Membership
Safety* Beauty Assistance
Cleanliness* Intimacy Sociality
Figure 1. ‘Classification of advertising appeals’ from Grigaliunaite and Pileliene (2016), based on Albers-Miller & Stafford (1999). * indicates supposed relevant dimensions to disgust towards lab meat
one notices that dimensions that underpin the disgust towards lab meat (i.e. unnaturalness, unawareness, limited sensory quality, see e.g. Bhat et al., 2015, Kadim et al., 2015) are predominantly rational of nature (naturalness, health, use of technologies, safety,
Ultimately, one can argue that overall, rational appeals are more effective in the issue presented here to reduce disgust towards lab meat. Disgust is context-bound and thus relies on information (Clark & Fessler, 2015), favouring rational messages. Furthermore, rational appeals are arguably superior in solving the unawareness-unfamiliarity issue underlying disgust (Bhat et al., 2015), as they involve more elements to be critically
examined (Holbrook, 1978) and emotional appeals can detract from thoughtful processing (Rosselli et al., 1995). Emotional appeals, although being arguably more attention grabbing than rational appeals (Ray & Batra, 1983), contain less factual information and are therefore less suited to solve the unawareness-unfamiliarity issue. The young nature of the market of lab meat also sides with rational appeals (Chandy et al., 2001). Additionally, the issues underlying the unawareness-unfamiliarity issue were found to be predominantly rational in nature (Grigaliunaite and Pileliene, 2016, Figure 1) and it follows that rational appeals would hold an advantageous position here also.
Thus, in sum, although emotional appeals have some properties speaking in favour of them and are expected to decrease disgust towards lab meat, in relation to diminishing disgust caused by an unawareness-unfamiliarity issue, rational appeals are expected to diminish disgust towards lab meat more. This generates the following hypothesis:
Disgust and acceptance
In relation to lab meat, moral disgust is a relevant domain of disgust (Tybur et al., 2009), as disgust evoked objections towards lab meat such as unnaturalness are partly socially embedded (Bhat et al., 2015) and thus the result of societal norms. Moral disgust involves the opinion of society in forming thoughts and beliefs about what behaviour is considered normal and socially acceptable (Tybur et al., 2009). For widespread acceptance of lab meat, this means that (eating) lab meat needs to be considered normal by society. Providing society with informational messages could reduce the unawareness-unfamiliarity issue (Bhat et al., 2015) and normalize lab meat, stimulating acceptance.
Disgust has been found to be able to change behaviour, elicited by persuasive arguments. For example, Curtis (2011) found that information provision (showing contaminated hands and stress its effect on food eaten by children) can evoke feelings of disgust and lead to change in behaviour (increases in washing hands prior to eating).
Furthermore, more related to edible material, in two experiments Martins and Pliner (2005) found that characteristics of food that incite disgust significantly affected acceptance to try out novel food negatively, regardless of its origin (animal vs nonanimal). Their
research essentially proves that a decrease in disgust toward a food leads to greater
acceptance. However, Zuckerman (1979) notes there is a duality in human attitude towards new foods. On one hand humans are eager to try out new food (sensation seeking), whilst on the other humans are ‘neophobic’, careful to eat unfamiliar new foods (disgust).
effective than a technical description of lab meat (focused on biotechnology and laboratory production) in driving acceptance of lab meat, partially through the indirect path of
experimental manipulation - perceived naturalness - disgust - willingness to eat.
Arguably, the reason that the two experimental manipulations did not directly affect disgust, could have been due to the general descriptions of lab meat, pointed out as a limitation of the study (Siegrist et al., 2018). Another possibility is the fact that the
experimental manipulations involve differences in message content (the conventional meat description is notably different from cultured meat descriptions). This leaves a gap as to whether messages that contain more elaborate descriptions and are more similar
content-wise, but different in framing (e.g. rational - emotional), could have a differential effect on disgust and subsequent acceptance.
Persuasive arguments and acceptance
Both persuasive rational and emotional messages can be utilized to convince individuals (Cacioppo & Petty, 1981; Pallak et al., 1983; Batra & Ray, 1986) and affect
behaviour. Research has found that persuasive arguments are positively related to a change in behaviour, e.g. Rosselli et al. (1995) note that solid rational arguments are more
successful in stimulating attitude change than solid emotional arguments provided to subjects of neutral mood. Besides, emotional argumentation is widely applied in social marketing (Antonetti et al., 2015; Brennan & Binney, 2010) by using feelings to alter consumer behaviour, and its potential to be effective has been shown.
Another manner of swaying individuals is pleading that conventional meat is unnatural to enhance lab meat acceptance (Bryant et al., 2019).
The literature review allowed the formation of Figure 2 (below), which provides a comprehensive overview of relationships between relevant variables and the valence of the relationships discussed previously. Persuasive arguments are expected to positively
influence acceptance directly, as well as indirectly through lowering the mediator variable disgust. As discussed before, however, it is anticipated that the effect of rational arguments will be more successful in reducing disgust towards lab meat than emotional arguments. The foundation for this expectation is that rational arguments are arguably better suited than emotional arguments to lower the unawareness-unfamiliarity issue underlying disgust towards lab meat. A lowered level of disgust evoked by the persuasive arguments is in turn expected to elevate the level of acceptance for lab meat.
The discussion in the literature review produces the following research question: Do
rational messages (vs emotional messages) lead to a greater reduction in disgust towards lab meat and a subsequent increase in the social acceptance of lab meat?
Research methodology
Participants
Participants (N= 105, Mage= 24.07, SDage= 7.38, 42.9% female) were invited to fill out an online survey in Qualtrics, without any compensation. Important to note is that 79% of respondents were Dutch (N= 83) and 21% had another nationality than Dutch (N= 22).
Method
To assess the differences between the effects of rational and emotional messages on lowering disgust towards and increasing acceptance of lab meat, a one factorial,
between-subjects design with two treatment conditions (rational and emotional) was utilized. The online Qualtrics survey structure is described hereafter.
First, participants were welcomed and assured that their data was anonymized and confidential. Thereafter, a general introduction of lab meat was provided, explaining
superficially how lab meat is created and hinted at its potential benefits (Consult Appendix 1 for the general introduction). This introduction also included a graphical representation to ease understanding of the process of how lab meat is produced.
Subsequently, participants were to read either a rational (N= 54) or emotional (N= 51) based message promoting lab meat, depending on their treatment condition. A timer of 30 seconds was attached to the message to ensure that it was read. The rational based message contained more detailed and elaborate information for critical evaluation (e.g. exact
emotional based message contained more vivid descriptions and incorporated elements aimed at tapping affective bases (example emotional message: ‘It will help protect ecosystems, like the marvellous Great Barrier Reef in Australian waters, safeguarding this breathtaking beauty of nature. Also, it contributes to mitigating the melting of polar caps, preventing millions of people from tragically losing their comfortable homes in large,
dangerous floods’). For the persuasive messages, refer to Appendix 2A and 2B for the rational and emotional messages respectively. The messages were academically based (Appendix 3) and accompanied by an image of a cooked lab meat burger.
Afterwards, participants filled out a selection of the discrete emotion questionnaire (Harmon-Jones et al., 2016) to measure the level of disgust (refer to Appendix 4). The discrete emotion questionnaire tested on multiple emotions, hiding to participants that the effect of the persuasive messages on disgust was the research purpose. The emotions were randomized to mitigate question order bias. Participants indicated on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = Not at all, 7 = An extreme amount) to what extent they experienced the emotions towards lab meat after reading the persuasive message. Disgust was measured by combining the four disgust items from the discrete emotion questionnaire: ‘Grossed out’ (M= 1.74, SD= 1.27), ‘Nausea’ (M= 1.47, SD= 1.10), ‘Sickened’ (M= 1.64, SD= 1.15) and ‘Revulsion’(M= 1.94, 1.41), creating a new disgust scale (Cronbach's alpha = 0.852).
what extent do you feel the message on lab meat was supported by logical facts and figures?’, on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = Not at all, 7 = An extreme amount).
Next, the participants were requested to provide demographic information (age, gender and nationality) and to report their level of meat consumption, according to four options (Rosenfeld et al. 2019): 1. I do not eat meat (meat excluders, N= 8), 2. I limit my meat intake but I still include meat in my diet (flexitarians, N= 43), 3. I do not limit my meat intake
(omnivores, N= 53) or 4. None of the above describe my diet accurately (no clear level of meat
consumption, N= 1).
Analyses
Manipulation check
To test for differences in perceived factualness between rational and emotional messages, an independent-samples t-test was conducted. Prior to conducting the independent-samples t-test, tests of normality and homogeneity of variances were
performed. Two outliers for the emotional condition were identified with value 1 (= not at all supported by logical facts and figures). However, they were included as it is believable that respondents truly found the emotional message to be void of logical facts and figures and as they were not severe outliers (marked with an asterisk in SPSS). Although the Shapiro-Wilk test indicated non-normality for both emotional (W(51)= 0.910, p= 0.001) and rational (W(54)= 0.897, p= 0.000) conditions, other relevant normality measures such as the
histogram, Q-Q plot and acceptable values for skewness (common acceptable range of -1 to 1, Emotional: -0.640; Rational: -0.637) and kurtosis (common acceptable range of -3 to 3,
homogeneity of variance assumption was met by an insignificant Levene’s test result (F(1,103)= 1.384, p= 0.242). The independent-samples t-test (F(1,103)= 2.843, p= 0.095) determined an insignificant difference in perceived factualness between the rational
messages (M= 4.93) and emotional messages (M= 4.45) groups at the alpha level = 0.05. Note that the test result (p= 0.095) is approaching significance (between 0.05 and 0.10). This indicates that the manipulation has been successful to a marginal extent.
Mediation analysis
Before conducting the mediation analysis, the following assumptions were tested for: linearity, uncorrelatedness of residuals, absence of strong multicollinearity, homoscedasticity of residuals, normality and no outliers (Casson & Farmer, 2014). A linear regression analysis with predictors message type and disgust and dependent variable acceptance was run. A partial regression plot indicated linearity between disgust and acceptance. Message type was not checked for linearity as it was dummy coded (0 = emotional, 1 = rational), and binary dummy variables are linear by definition (e.g. Hardy, 1993). The Durbin-Watson statistic (1.789, which is not <1 nor > 3) showed that the residuals are uncorrelated. The VIF values (both 1.01 for disgust and acceptance) indicated that there was no strong multicollinearity as they were below 10. Observing the scatterplot suggested there might be heteroscedasticity, thus violating the homoscedasticity assumption. The histogram and P-P Plot indicated
resemblance to normality and no outliers were detected by the casewise diagnostic function, ‘outliers outside’, set at three standard deviations. As all but one assumption were met, it was decided to cautiously proceed with the mediation analysis.
occurred as predicted in Figure 2, a simple mediation analysis was conducted utilizing Process model 4 by Hayes in SPSS at CI = 95 and 5000 bootstrap samples. Provided that the
homoscedasticity assumption was violated, heteroscedasticity-consistent inference (HC4) was utilized in SPSS as recommended by Hayes & Cai (2007). The independent variable was
message type, disgust was the mediator and acceptance was the dependent variable. Message type had, ignoring the mediator, no significant relationship with acceptance (b= 0.176, t(103)= 0.611, p= 0.543). Furthermore, no significant relationship was found between message type and disgust (b= -0.226, t(103)= -1.108, p= 0.270). A significant negative
relationship between disgust and acceptance was discovered (b= -0.564, t(102)= -2.985, p= 0.004).
Discussion
Results
research design did not include a control group to compare against, nor a longitudinal approach which could compare pre and post exposure disgust scores.
Similarly, acceptance scores on a 1 to 7 scale for both emotional (M= 4.49, SD= 0.22) and rational (M= 4.67, SD= 0.19) messages are rather high, suggesting the messages positively affected acceptance, but again this result cannot be attributed to the messages with certainty as no control group, nor a longitudinal approach was incorporated in the study.
Thus, possibly both message types have been effective in driving down disgust and increasing acceptance, but no significant difference existed between the driving down disgust effects of rational and emotional messages, nor between the enhancing acceptance effects of rational and emotional messages. This resulted in the categorical independent variable
message type having no significant relationships with disgust nor acceptance, thus preventing mediation. Further research adding a control condition or employing a longitudinal design could verify whether rational and emotional messages truly can be utilized to increase acceptance, partly through decreasing disgust (i.e. mediation).
A significant negative relationship was found between disgust and acceptance as
anticipated by Figure 2. This finding is similar to results discovered by Siegrist et al. (2018), who found that disgust was negatively related to willingness to eat. This study’s acceptance scale broadens the implications of the effects of reducing disgust towards lab meat on its
Limitations
This research encountered some limitations. For instance, in the study participants were not able to taste lab meat. Bryant et al. (2019) note on this problem in their research: ‘Forecast error is probable: predicting one’s own future attitudes and behavior towards a product which is not yet available is difficult’ (p. 44). Furthermore, the participants were mainly Dutch (79%) and therefore the results might not be generalizable to other countries than the Netherlands or cultures, as disgust is subject to effects of culture, social influences and norms (Curtis et al., 2011; Olatunji & Sawchuk, 2005; Rozin et al., 2008). Additionally, this study did not account for pre attitudes of disgust and acceptance, thus change in disgust and acceptance as a result of message exposure could not be determined with certainty. Social desirability bias - i.e. participants might have been inclined to answer as society would want them to for an innovation with considerable environmental and ethical significance such as lab meat - is another limitation put forward by Bryant et al. (2019) in the context of lab meat.
Conclusion
This study researched the differential effects between rational and emotional messages and their direct impact on acceptance as well as their indirect impact through the mediator disgust. The answers to hypothesis 1 (H1: Rational messages decrease disgust towards lab
meat more than emotional messages do) and the research question of this research ‘Do
rational messages (vs emotional messages) lead to a greater reduction in disgust towards lab meat and a subsequent increase in the social acceptance of lab meat?’ were found to be
meat. Some positive indications were found for the argument that disgust towards lab meat might be lowered by using either emotional or rational messages. Disgust was found to be negatively and significantly related to acceptance.
The findings of this research implicate that proponents of lab meat can increase acceptance for lab meat by reducing disgust towards lab meat. Although this research found indications that rational and emotional messages potentially decrease disgust, marketeers, lab meat promoters and researchers should proceed cautiously as this study provides no definitive evidence for this assumption. Further research, utilizing a control condition or longitudinal study design, is recommended to verify this hypothesis.
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Appendices
Appendix 1. General introduction to lab meat
Lab meat is meat produced in a lab from animal stem cells, by applying tissue engineering technologies originating from regenerative medicine (Post, 2014). Presented below is a graphical representation of how this process works. Lab meat is different from conventional meat, which produces meat through growing animals at farms. Lab meat holds great potential regarding animal welfare, the environment, benefits for humans and safe food provision. In the future, lab meat could become a sustainable substitution for conventional meat.
Appendix 2. Persuasive messages
Appendix 2A. Rational message
Sensory characteristics
Lab meat actually tastes almost as good as conventional meat according to a professional testing panel. Color can also be replicated by adding red beetle juice and saffron to make it look just like conventional meat. Furthermore, the texture was also reported to be similar to that of conventional meat
Environmental benefits
Lab meat production is much more friendly to the environment than conventional production. Lab meat requires up to 45% lower energy usage, 96% lower greenhouse gas emissions, 99% lower land usage and 96% lower water usage than conventional meat, contributing to mitigating climate change effects such as collapsion of ecosystems and melting polar caps Animal welfare
Lab meat also improves animal welfare, as less farm animals will be needed: More space per animal in the sheds and on the walking grounds. More proper castration treatment with sufficient anesthetics. Fewer animals that need to be slaughtered. In theory, one animal could provide the whole world with lab meat, and meat could be created without having to kill animals inhumanely ever again
Human benefits
Lab meat is beneficial to humans, allowing for more controllable fat content and the addition of omega 3 (decreases risk of heart attacks) or vitamins
Appendix 2B. Emotional message
Sensory characteristics
Lab meat actually tastes almost as delicious and appetizing as your regular burger. It looks just as colorful and the texture stimulates the senses with similar springiness, gumminess and chewiness as those juicy burgers you put on the barbecue in the summer Environmental benefits
Lab meat production is much more friendly to the environment than conventional production. It will help protect ecosystems, like the marvellous Great Barrier Reef in Australian waters safeguarding this breathtaking beauty of nature. Also, it helps mitigate the melting of polar caps preventing millions of people from tragically losing their comfortable homes in large, dangerous floods
Animal welfare
Human benefits
Appendix 3. Persuasive message (rational) with references
Sensory characteristics
Lab meat actually tastes almost as good as conventional meat according to a professional testing panel (Post, 2014). Color can also be replicated by adding red beetle juice and saffron to make it look just like conventional meat (Bhat et al., 2015). Furthermore, the texture was also reported to be similar to that of conventional meat (Post, 2013, available at
https://culturedbeef.org/node/14044/, first video), with similar springiness, gumminess and chewiness
Environmental benefits
Lab meat production is much more friendly to the environment than conventional production. Lab meat requires up to 45% lower energy usage, 96% lower greenhouse gas emissions, 99% lower land usage and 96% lower water usage than conventional meat production (Tuomisto & Teixeira de Mattos, 2011), contributing to mitigating climate change effects (Bryant & Bernett, 2018) such as collapsions of ecosystems and melting polar caps
Animal welfare
Lab meat improves animal welfare, as less farm animals will be needed: More space per animal in the sheds and on the walking grounds. More proper castration treatment with sufficient anesthetics (Goodwin & Shoulders, 2013). Fewer animals that need to be slaughtered. In theory, one animal could provide the whole world with lab meat (Bhat & Bhat 2011), and meat could be created without having to kill animals inhumanely ever again
Human benefits
Appendix 4. Discrete emotion questionnaire by Harmon-Jones et al. 2016
Please indicate your response using the scale provided.
While reading the previous message, to what extent did you experience these emotions towards lab meat?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Not at all Slightly Somewhat Moderately Quite a bit Very much An extreme amount
Anger (Ag)* Scared (F)*
Wanting (Dr)* Mad (Ag)*
Dread (Ax) Satisfaction (H)
Sad (S)* Sickened (Dg)*
Easygoing (R) Empty (S)*
Grossed out (Dg)* Craving (Dr)
Happy (H)* Panic (F)
Terror (F) Longing (Dr)
Rage (Ag) Calm (R)
Grief (S) Fear (F)
Nausea (Dg)* Relaxation (R)
Anxiety (Ax) Revulsion (Dg)*
Chilled out (R)* Worry (Ax)
Desire (Dr)* Enjoyment (H)
Nervous (Ax)* Pissed off (Ag)
Lonely (S) Liking (H)*
Ag = Anger items, Dg = Disgust items, F = Fear items, Ax = Anxiety items, S = Sadness items, Dr = Desire items, R = Relaxation items, H = Happiness items.
