Associations between romantic partners' dietary motives and their plant-based meat alternative consumption

Plant-based meat alternatives (PBMAs) play a key role in the transition towards more sustainable food systems. Consumer research has so far primarily focused on how personal factors influence people's decisions for or against PBMAs. Yet dietary choices are socially embedded and subject to interpersonal influences. Among these, romantic partners may be particularly important for each other's PBMA consumption because of their close relationship and high rate of meal sharing. Partner's roles might be more pronounced if partners differ in their attachment to meat. Using a Swiss convenience sample of 136 couples who differed in their level of meat consumption, we examined how dietary motives were associated with personal and partner's PBMA consumption. Both partners reported on dietary motives and food consumption in a baseline survey and across 28 shared meals, which allowed us to test between- and within-person effects using dyadic modeling frameworks. Regarding personal effects, being more concerned about animals and the environment related positively, and endorsing common meat-eating beliefs negatively, with PBMA consumption. Having limited access to alternatives was a barrier to PBMA choice for individuals with lower meat consumption. Regarding interpersonal effects, partners were more likely to eat PBMAs at meals where the other person was more concerned about animals. Lower (but not higher) meat consuming individuals' beliefs that meat is natural, necessary, and nice were associated with less frequent PBMA consumption of their partners. This exploratory study highlights the value of taking an intra- and interpersonal perspective to research on, and the promotion of, meat substitution.