Thank you for writing this thoughtful piece! I especially appreciate the transparency in reasoning and the careful attention to empirical evidence (some of which I’ve contributed to).
I wanted to share a few notes on the displacement section—specifically, some important papers that weren’t mentioned and a few potential misinterpretations of others:
Carlsson 2022 presents a hypothetical discrete choice experiment on lower prices for plant-based meat, finding that 30% of consumers in Sweden would not choose plant-based meat even if it were free. This highlights a key limitation of many other discrete choice experiments: they may not be testing sufficiently low prices and could be subject to floor effects. In other words, consumers’ willingness to pay for plant-based meat may be even lower than some studies estimate.
Lusk 2022 is strictly a modeling paper (as you note) and effectively assumes a cross-price elasticity between plant- and animal-based meats. The specific quantities used are derived from hypothetical discrete choice experiments, but Lusk 2022 itself does not adduce new empirical evidence of displacement to my knowledge. (However, it does provide a useful review of cross-price elasticities.)
Mendez 2023 reviews cross-price elasticities between butter and margarine. It’s important to note that cross-price elasticities do not directly measure displacement—they measure (in theory) how a price change in one product affects demand for another. While price displacement is one possible mechanism, other mechanisms could also be at play.
Grundy 2022 finds evidence supporting some interventions using mycoprotein-based meat alternatives. However, if I recall correctly, these are intensive, multi-component interventions that go beyond simply making mycoprotein-based meat alternatives available. As a result, it’s unclear whether the meat alternative itself was the causal factor in the outcomes observed.
Malan 2022 is, in my opinion, one of the strongest studies on this topic. It finds either null or very small effects under reasonable analyses (see Peacock 2024).
Several observational studies use grocery store scanner data to measure behavioral displacement between plant- and animal-based meat. Neuhofer 2024 is one such study, cited for its findings on the proportion of consumers purchasing both plant- and animal-based meat. It also provides an observational estimate suggesting that displacement is either small or nonexistent. Additional studies in this vein include Cuffey 2022, Gordon 2023, and Meyer 2024, some of which explore potential sources of exogeneity. To my recollection, each finds either null or very small displacement effects. However, since some of these papers rely on the same data sources, they shouldn’t necessarily be treated as independent pieces of evidence.
Overall, I think this section may place too much emphasis on self-reported surveys that may tend toward finding effects, rather than studies that measure behavioral outcomes.
Thanks, Jacob – for this and for your paper from 2023, which first caused me to question many of my assumptions in this area, which in large part led to this post. I agree that I am overly reliant on self-reported surveys here (this was largely because they were what I could most easily find), so I’m excited to dig into some of these papers measuring outcomes and I appreciate your sharing them.
As someone with more expertise in this area than I have, what would you say is your own answer to the question I’m posing here? I get the sense that you are not very optimistic about the potential for alt proteins to displace animal-based meat, but I would love to know what nuances there might be in your views, how confident you are, and what unknowns you are still curious about.
Thank you for writing this thoughtful piece! I especially appreciate the transparency in reasoning and the careful attention to empirical evidence (some of which I’ve contributed to).
I wanted to share a few notes on the displacement section—specifically, some important papers that weren’t mentioned and a few potential misinterpretations of others:
Carlsson 2022 presents a hypothetical discrete choice experiment on lower prices for plant-based meat, finding that 30% of consumers in Sweden would not choose plant-based meat even if it were free. This highlights a key limitation of many other discrete choice experiments: they may not be testing sufficiently low prices and could be subject to floor effects. In other words, consumers’ willingness to pay for plant-based meat may be even lower than some studies estimate.
Lusk 2022 is strictly a modeling paper (as you note) and effectively assumes a cross-price elasticity between plant- and animal-based meats. The specific quantities used are derived from hypothetical discrete choice experiments, but Lusk 2022 itself does not adduce new empirical evidence of displacement to my knowledge. (However, it does provide a useful review of cross-price elasticities.)
Mendez 2023 reviews cross-price elasticities between butter and margarine. It’s important to note that cross-price elasticities do not directly measure displacement—they measure (in theory) how a price change in one product affects demand for another. While price displacement is one possible mechanism, other mechanisms could also be at play.
Grundy 2022 finds evidence supporting some interventions using mycoprotein-based meat alternatives. However, if I recall correctly, these are intensive, multi-component interventions that go beyond simply making mycoprotein-based meat alternatives available. As a result, it’s unclear whether the meat alternative itself was the causal factor in the outcomes observed.
Malan 2022 is, in my opinion, one of the strongest studies on this topic. It finds either null or very small effects under reasonable analyses (see Peacock 2024).
Several observational studies use grocery store scanner data to measure behavioral displacement between plant- and animal-based meat. Neuhofer 2024 is one such study, cited for its findings on the proportion of consumers purchasing both plant- and animal-based meat. It also provides an observational estimate suggesting that displacement is either small or nonexistent. Additional studies in this vein include Cuffey 2022, Gordon 2023, and Meyer 2024, some of which explore potential sources of exogeneity. To my recollection, each finds either null or very small displacement effects. However, since some of these papers rely on the same data sources, they shouldn’t necessarily be treated as independent pieces of evidence.
Overall, I think this section may place too much emphasis on self-reported surveys that may tend toward finding effects, rather than studies that measure behavioral outcomes.
Thanks, Jacob – for this and for your paper from 2023, which first caused me to question many of my assumptions in this area, which in large part led to this post. I agree that I am overly reliant on self-reported surveys here (this was largely because they were what I could most easily find), so I’m excited to dig into some of these papers measuring outcomes and I appreciate your sharing them.
As someone with more expertise in this area than I have, what would you say is your own answer to the question I’m posing here? I get the sense that you are not very optimistic about the potential for alt proteins to displace animal-based meat, but I would love to know what nuances there might be in your views, how confident you are, and what unknowns you are still curious about.