The faint, the flourishing, and the floundering: understanding how Americans are reducing their meat consumption

• In Event: 50620 - Section on Environmental Sociology Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 13: Food Consumption and Waste

Abstract

Meat consumption significantly impacts climate change and public health. Flexitarians, who limit but do not completely eliminate meat, form a large part of the U.S. population. Flexitarianism holds promise both because flexitarians may be open to reducing further and because unrestricted meat eaters may perceive flexitarianism as a more achievable and desirable approach than vegetarianism.

However, there is evidence that many flexitarians barely reduce their meat consumption. This may correspond with a shift in the meaning of vegetarianism from a social and political movement to a consumption-based lifestyle, and to an emerging high-status "eco-habitus" characterized by environmentally-aware consumption. Understanding the behavior of flexitarians is relevant both for environmental policy and for scholars of social movements.

I take the perspective that there are meaningful subgroups of flexitarians worth studying. I revisit a national, census-balanced dataset where flexitarians actually averaged higher meat consumption than unrestricted meat eaters. I implement a latent class analysis to divide participants based on type and frequency of meat consumption and then explore the motivations and experiences of each class.

Analysis identified three classes of flexitarians: the faint, the flourishing, and the floundering. The "faint," the majority, are strongly motivated by health and barely reduce their meat consumption. The "flourishing," a large minority, are also primarily health-motivated, although less so, and only eat meat a few times a week. The "floundering," a smaller minority, cite more motivations than the other two groups, including significantly more ethical and social motivation, yet they eat dramatically more meat than even unrestricted meat eaters.

This "floundering" class is novel and helps explain previous counterintuitive findings about flexitarian meat consumption. The primacy of health motivations, and the high meat consumption of flexitarians who do subscribe to ethical motivations, also contribute to ongoing discussion about the depoliticization of vegetarianism and environmentally-aware lifestyles.

Author

• Jennifer Schweers, University of Massachusetts-Boston