Meat grown in a lab offers the promise of ethical consumption of animal protein but also suffers from consumer hesitation because of its extreme novelty. What would get consumers to eat lab-grown meat? A name with positive connotations would certainly help.
Researchers led by Professor Mark Chong of LKCSB have found that the consumers preferred the term “cultivated meat” over phrases like “lab-grown meat” and “cell-based meat”.
“Studies show that different names given to the same food product can result in different levels of consumer acceptance,” said Prof Chong, who is a Professor of Communication Management (Practice)at LKCSB. “Our study shows that ‘cultivated meat’ is the term most likely to foster consumer acceptance of this alternative protein.” Moreover, the term “cultivated meat” was most significantly related to positive attitudes toward cultivated meat.
He added that having a single, universally accepted term can also help to reduce the consumer confusion arising from the current plethora of different names.
In their investigation, the researchers also found that Singaporean participants had a greater acceptance of lab-grown meat compared to their American counterparts, and they suggest that this cultural difference was explained by Singaporeans' stronger social image eating motivations.
The Singaporean cultural trait of “kiasuism”, which is exemplified by the fear of losing out or being left behind, may explain Singaporeans' motivation to project an image of being ‘trailblazers’ (vis-a-vis other nationalities) by expressing a higher acceptance of novel foods such as lab-grown meat, they said.
These findings were published in the paper “A cross-country investigation of social image motivation and acceptance of lab-grown meat in Singapore and the United States” that was published in the March 2022 issue of the journal Appetite.
The paper was co-authored with Professor of Psychology Angela Leung from SMU and Verity Lua, a graduate student at Stanford University.
