It’s probably the lizardman constant showing up again—if ~5% of people answer randomly and <5% of the population are actually veg*ns, then many of the self-reported veg*ns will have been people who answered randomly.
I think this is a good explanation of at least part of the phenomenon. As you note, where we do samples of the general population and only 5% of people report being vegetarian or vegan, then even a small number of lizardperson answering randomly, oddly or deliberately trolling could make up a large part of the 5%.
That said, I note that even in surveys which are deliberately solely targeting identified vegetarians or vegans (so 100% of people in the sample identified as vegetarian or vegan), large percentages then say that they eat some meat. Rethink Priorities has an unpublished survey (report forthcoming soon) which sampled exclusively people who have previously identified as vegetarian or vegan (and then asked them again in the survey whether they identified as vegetarian or vegan) and we found just over 25% of those who answered affirmatively to the latter question still seemed to indicate that they consumed some meat product in a food frequency questionnaire. So that suggests to me that there’s likely something more systematic going on, where some reasonably large percentage of people identify as vegetarian or vegan despite eating meat (e.g. because they eat meat very infrequently and think that’s close enough). Of course, it’s also possible that the first sampling to find self-identified vegetarian or vegans sampled a lot of lizardpersons, meaning that there was a disproportionate number of lizardpersons in the second sampling, meaning that there was a disproportionate number of lizardpersons who then identified as vegetarian or vegan in our survey. And perhaps lizardpersons don’t just answer randomly but are disproportionately likely to identify as vegetarian or vegan when asked, which might also contribute.
It’s probably the lizardman constant showing up again—if ~5% of people answer randomly and <5% of the population are actually veg*ns, then many of the self-reported veg*ns will have been people who answered randomly.
I think this is a good explanation of at least part of the phenomenon. As you note, where we do samples of the general population and only 5% of people report being vegetarian or vegan, then even a small number of lizardperson answering randomly, oddly or deliberately trolling could make up a large part of the 5%.
That said, I note that even in surveys which are deliberately solely targeting identified vegetarians or vegans (so 100% of people in the sample identified as vegetarian or vegan), large percentages then say that they eat some meat. Rethink Priorities has an unpublished survey (report forthcoming soon) which sampled exclusively people who have previously identified as vegetarian or vegan (and then asked them again in the survey whether they identified as vegetarian or vegan) and we found just over 25% of those who answered affirmatively to the latter question still seemed to indicate that they consumed some meat product in a food frequency questionnaire. So that suggests to me that there’s likely something more systematic going on, where some reasonably large percentage of people identify as vegetarian or vegan despite eating meat (e.g. because they eat meat very infrequently and think that’s close enough). Of course, it’s also possible that the first sampling to find self-identified vegetarian or vegans sampled a lot of lizardpersons, meaning that there was a disproportionate number of lizardpersons in the second sampling, meaning that there was a disproportionate number of lizardpersons who then identified as vegetarian or vegan in our survey. And perhaps lizardpersons don’t just answer randomly but are disproportionately likely to identify as vegetarian or vegan when asked, which might also contribute.