Consumer Choice of Animal vs. Plant-Based Burgers in a Complex Choice Environment: What Drives Decisions?

We conducted an experiment on the choice of plant-based vs. animal-source frozen patties and burgers in a complex (50 unique products) choice environment. We examined the impact of two variations in the choice environment on the choice of plant-based vs. animal-source burgers: the prevalence of plant-burgers (20% vs. 30%) and the presence (or not) of a filter enabling participants to easily find pulse-based burger products. Further, we examined individual-specific drivers of choice outcomes, and we introduced a novel application of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to identify choice outcomes that participants were actively (cognitively) modelling during the choice process in terms of the product alternatives in the choice environment. These outcomes included taste, cost, health, environment, among others. We examined the impact of these EMA variables alongside more traditional measures of consumer priorities, beliefs, and habits. We find a small percentage of plant-based choices in conditions without the filter (approximately 10%), with no meaningful difference between the low and high prevalence conditions. The proportion of plant-based choices more closely resemble retail data than outcomes of recent choice experiments, which predict plant-based choices to be around 30%. However, when the filter is present, the proportion of plant-based choices is approximately 30%. We find evidence that EMA can be a useful tool to understand consumer cognition during choice. Participants actively considering health or the environment were significantly more likely to choose plant-based options, while individuals reporting active consideration of taste or price were significantly more likely to choose meat-based alternatives.