Cultured Foods: Psychological Barriers and the Role of Disgust

ABSTRACT: The devastating environmental impact of traditional agriculture has ignited interest in cellular agriculture – producing food by cultivating cells from living organisms in controlled laboratory settings. Although research on cultured foods is expanding, consumer perceptions remain understudied beyond cultured meat. Across three studies, we moved beyond the cultured meat example to examine acceptance barriers toward cultured foods from different cell sources. Study 1 (N = 302) provides a first gauge of consumers’ perceptions and implicit categorization of cultured food products from different cell sources (e.g., cultured animal flesh, cultured non-flesh animal-sourced foods, cultured plants), and a comparative assessment of the psychological barriers to their acceptance. Building on that, Studies 2a (N = 601) and 2b (N = 602) examine the sources of disgust toward cultured foods derived from different cell sources. In these studies, we also assessed the potential moderating role of perceived innovativeness of the cultured food product in buffering the effect of disgust on willingness to try cultured food. Our findings suggest that different types of disgust play a pivotal role in barriers to the acceptance of cultured foods, which vary across different cell sources. Additionally, perceived innovativeness shows potential as a moderator of this relationship, offering a novel pathway for mitigating aversion. This mechanism has not yet been systematically explored in the literature and warrants further research. Overall, this research highlights key differences in consumer responses based on cell sources, provides new insight into the role of different sources of disgust, and introduces perceived innovativeness as a promising variable in promoting acceptance.