ASSESSING OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES OF THE PLANT-BASED MEAT ALTERNATIVES: CONSUMER PREFERENCES, MARKET TRENDS, AND PRODUCTION RESPONSES

The long-term goal of this research project is to provide a comprehensive evaluation of the opportunities and challenges during the rapid development and surging demand for plant-based meat alternatives (PBMAs), and to improve our understanding of the regulatory role in the face of the competition between PBMAs and animal-based meat (ABM). Specifically, we propose three major research objectives that integrate each sector of the supply chain, focusing on the consumer (Objective 1), market (Objective 2), and production (Objective 3). Each of the major objectives extends to several interconnected sub-objectives as follows:Objective 1: Assessing consumer adoption pattern of PBMAs and heterogeneous preferences toward PBMA product attributes.Objective (1a): Investigating heterogeneous consumer preferences for product type, ingredient origin, certification, and label format.Objective (1b): Estimating consumer adoption pattern for PBMAs and the effects of PBMA adoption on dietary intake.Objective 2: Eliciting revealed market demand for PBMAs and competitors' response to entry and increased competition in the meat market.Objective (2a): Identifying meat industry strategic price and variety response to the PMBA entry.Objective (2b): Developing a large demand system for PBMAs and competing meat products.Objective (2c): Examining the effect of state-level labeling regulations on PBMA demand.Objective 3: Evaluating economic opportunities and environmental benefits in domestic pea supply in response to the uprising PBMA demand.Objective (3a): Modeling supply response to price through crop rotations which involve successive land cover decisions across seasons.Objective (3b): Estimating the potential environmental impact from the planting responses for pea production due to crop price change.