Thanks that's really helpful. You're right it doesn't seem like increased prevalence of fake meat options is leading to any significant increase in % of vegans. I do find this quite hard to marry with my personal experience - I am way more vegan in my home city (where there are good, widespread vegan options) than when travelling abroad. And I'm fairly sure I would not choose to identify as vegan/veggie at all if I lived in a country where there were far fewer options. But the stats would suggest that veganism is in fact quite inelastic to this. Strange!
Hope your hog roast wasn't too difficult - sending solidarity! I had a jackfruit hog roast alternative once, I appreciated the effort but it wasn't very nice...I'm sure Beyond could have done a better job.
I'm not sure it's helpful to view one's capacity to make sacrifices as a fixed budget. I wouldn't be surprised if vegans and monks tend to become more ethical rather than less ethical. Not just because it's signalling which correlates with wider ethical behaviours - but because making an ethical sacrifice does something to your psychology (e.g. makes you start to self-identify as an ethical person) and this actually increases your capacity to make further sacrifices.
Some sacrifices probably trade off against each other more directly than others. For example, if I donate 10 dollars to charity A, I can definitely imagine feeling less morally obliged to donate a further 10 dollars to charity B. However, if I save a child from a burning building, I don't think this would reduce my enthusiasm for donating 10 dollars to charity. In fact, I can imagine it doing the opposite.
Interesting, but I'm not sure this captures the main potential benefit of adding plant-based meat options. These options improve the experience of being a vegan - thereby increasing takeup/retention of veganism - rather than being appealing to meat-eaters in the moment. I would be way more likely to be vegan if there were vegan meat alternatives everywhere I went (including meat-heavy experiences like Christmas, BBQs, holidays), as opposed to just salad and lentils. Even when they aren't that tasty, the fake meat makes me feel less "left out".
The fact the fake meat options are displacing the pure vegetable options at all, is a sign that they are improving the experience of being vegan.
Obviously, this study does still tell us something about how appealing/unappealing vegan meat options are to people, and the results have updated me downwards a bit. But not by a huge amount. I very rarely see my meat-eater friends order vegan options (whether vegetables or fake meat); and I very rarely see my vegan friends break their veganism because there was only a vegetable option rather than a fake meat option. So I think I would have predicted broadly similar results.
Thanks that's really helpful. You're right it doesn't seem like increased prevalence of fake meat options is leading to any significant increase in % of vegans. I do find this quite hard to marry with my personal experience - I am way more vegan in my home city (where there are good, widespread vegan options) than when travelling abroad. And I'm fairly sure I would not choose to identify as vegan/veggie at all if I lived in a country where there were far fewer options. But the stats would suggest that veganism is in fact quite inelastic to this. Strange!
Hope your hog roast wasn't too difficult - sending solidarity! I had a jackfruit hog roast alternative once, I appreciated the effort but it wasn't very nice...I'm sure Beyond could have done a better job.
I'm not sure it's helpful to view one's capacity to make sacrifices as a fixed budget. I wouldn't be surprised if vegans and monks tend to become more ethical rather than less ethical. Not just because it's signalling which correlates with wider ethical behaviours - but because making an ethical sacrifice does something to your psychology (e.g. makes you start to self-identify as an ethical person) and this actually increases your capacity to make further sacrifices.
Some sacrifices probably trade off against each other more directly than others. For example, if I donate 10 dollars to charity A, I can definitely imagine feeling less morally obliged to donate a further 10 dollars to charity B. However, if I save a child from a burning building, I don't think this would reduce my enthusiasm for donating 10 dollars to charity. In fact, I can imagine it doing the opposite.
Interesting, but I'm not sure this captures the main potential benefit of adding plant-based meat options. These options improve the experience of being a vegan - thereby increasing takeup/retention of veganism - rather than being appealing to meat-eaters in the moment. I would be way more likely to be vegan if there were vegan meat alternatives everywhere I went (including meat-heavy experiences like Christmas, BBQs, holidays), as opposed to just salad and lentils. Even when they aren't that tasty, the fake meat makes me feel less "left out".
The fact the fake meat options are displacing the pure vegetable options at all, is a sign that they are improving the experience of being vegan.
Obviously, this study does still tell us something about how appealing/unappealing vegan meat options are to people, and the results have updated me downwards a bit. But not by a huge amount. I very rarely see my meat-eater friends order vegan options (whether vegetables or fake meat); and I very rarely see my vegan friends break their veganism because there was only a vegetable option rather than a fake meat option. So I think I would have predicted broadly similar results.