Consumer behaviour towards plant-based diets: A systematic review and Case study

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The meat industry and population rates have been simultaneously growing. With the limited capacity of natural resources in the world, this practice needs to be monitored and changed to a more sustainable behaviour such as consumption of plant-based diets; to sustain into the future. This research paper aims at helping understand how consumers perceive and classify plant-based diets in relation to meat-based diets, and identifying the enablers and barriers present for consumers when considering adopting a plant-based diet. Through the application of a systematic review, it was found that 22 product attributes, 71 consumer traits and 45 meat-attachment factors can influence consumer decisions regarding purchasing plant-based products and following a plant-based diet. It was found that the most significant ones from the review were also selected as most influential in encouraging or discouraging towards a plant-based diet from the complimenting survey. Meat persists to hold as the dominant food culture, yet the results highlight that both product attributes and consumer traits which influence consumer behaviour have more potential to be enablers to plant-based diets than barriers. Marketers and policy advocates could use this information along with behavioral theories and frameworks from current literature such as stages of change model, dual-process theory, and pentagon model of dimensions of sustainability to promote the nutritional transition to plant-based diets (Hoek C., et al., 2011); (Horgan, Scalco, Craig, Whybrow, & Macdiarmid, 2019); (Vinnari & Vinnari, 2013).