UC Irvine

Plant-based alternatives have been gaining attention due to their health and environmental benefits, as well as their technological improvements that make the taste, texture, and appearance more similar to animal-based meats and milk. Demand estimates from this study’s nested logit model show that people are much more flexible in their milk choice than their meat choice, which is likely due to the fact that milk has a much wider array of applications than meat. The results show that consumers care about the health effects of their choice, but still have a higher willingness to pay for products that best satisfy their taste preferences. With an understanding of which characteristics consumers value in animal-based meats, research and development efforts in the plant-based protein industry can be more focused in trying to develop those attributes. Decreasing the environmental footprint associated with agriculture requires not only adopting plant-based products but also analyzing the marginal costs of the beef industry with more scrutiny. Through a random-coefficient logit model, including supply-side estimation, federal meat crop subsidies incentivize beef production because they are shown to have a small, but negative impact on marginal cost.