The politics of red meat consumption and climate change

Red meat production is one of the leading sources of carbon dioxide emission thus reducing meat production and consumption is crucial. Using a sample of American adults (n = 456), the link between right-wing sociopolitical ideologies and (i) attitudes towards red meat; (ii) willingness to reduce red meat consumption; (iii) willingness to pay more for red meat; (iv) belief about the impact of red meat consumption on the environment; and (v) and distrust (versus trust) of authorities was examined. Right-wing ideologies (i.e. right-wing-authoritarianism and social dominance orientation) were associated with more positive attitudes towards red meat, unwillingness to consume less red meat or pay more for red meat, disbelief that red meat negatively impacts the environment, and greater distrust of information from authorities that propose a link between red meat production and negative environmental impact. However, results varied by political ideology dimension. Findings suggest that attempts to alter peoples’ red meat consumption—as part of a strategy for tackling climate change—must incorporate a nuanced understanding of the impact of sociopolitical ideologies on attitudes towards red meat consumption and the need to raise awareness about its impact on the environment.

The increase of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is and will continue to have a devastating effect on the climate, with worldwide negative consequences for human and animal health and well-being (Grossi et al 2019).GHG emissions from the production of livestock, particularly red meat production, is on par with emissions from cars, trucks, and airplanes combined (Gerber et al 2013).Efforts to curb GHG emissions should necessarily focus on reducing red meat production.To reduce production, researchers recommend cutting out red meat or embracing a 'flexitarian' diet in which the average person consumes 75% less beef and 90% less pork (Springmann et al 2018).Reducing meat consumption is challenging because of the personal and social significance of meat (Macdiarmid et al 2016).There is evidence that people's politics, for instance, are implicated in red meat consumption (Nezlek and Forestell 2019).Most of this research is within the context of the humananimal relationship (versus environment/climate); yet, campaigns aimed at reducing meat consumption tend to target health or environmental (versus animal-welfare) concerns (e.g.Rayala et al 2022).Moreover, attempting to reduce red meat consumption by appealing to animal welfare concerns operates differently than appealing to environmental or health concerns (Dijksta and Rotelli 2022).Although environmentally driven appeals are more politically controversial (Taillie et al 2022), there is little known about how sociopolitical ideologies predict willingness to change meat consumption in the context of climate change.
Meat eaters are more likely to endorse politically conservative policies, identify as conservative or support conservative parties, and vote for conservative politicians (Pfeiler andEgloff 2018, Nezlek andForestell 2019).Findings such as these are informative, however, sociopolitical ideology (i.e. a set of political attitudes and beliefs) is more complex than a single liberal-conservative continuum or party identification, with many well supported models of sociopolitical ideology bi-dimensional in nature (Duckitt 2001).Therefore, to get a better understanding of how ideology relates to meat-consumption, more nuanced measures of ideology are needed.
In bi-dimensional models, typically, one dimension captures socio-cultural content and the second encompasses economic or hierarchical content (Duckitt 2001).The most widely used indices of these ideological dimensions are right-wing authoritarianism (RWA, Altemeyer 1998) and social dominance orientation (SDO, Ho et al 2015).Individuals who strongly endorse RWA subscribe to social conventions, unquestioningly obey authorities perceived as legitimate, and approve of aggression toward norm violators (Altemeyer 1998).Those higher in RWA prefer tradition and established practise over social reform (Jost et al 2003).On the other hand, individuals who strongly (versus weakly) endorse SDO prefer social hierarchies that position higher status groups at the top of the social ladder and lower status groups at the bottom (Ho et al 2015).Those higher in SDO, therefore, prefer social inequality versus equality (Jost et al 2003).Hence, whereas RWA corresponds to the socio-cultural dimension, SDO corresponds to the economic/hierarchy dimension.Together, the two scales provide a comprehensive understanding of an individual's sociopolitical ideology.
RWA and SDO predict shared and unique outcomes (Duckitt 2001).For example, the limited research investigating a link between RWA and SDO with dietary preferences suggests that both those higher in RWA or SDO like and consume more meat (Allen et al 2000, Veser et al 2015).Related research reveals that both also perceive climate change as less risky (Choma et al 2013), are less concerned about the environment (Milfont et al 2013), and are less willing to change their behaviour for the environment (Stanley et al 2019).Illustrating how RWA and SDO can differently predict climate outcomes, longitudinal studies suggest that RWA (versus SDO) predicts climate change denial more strongly over time (Stanley et al 2017), whereas cross-sectional studies indicate that SDO (versus RWA) is a stronger predictor of environmental-related variables when compared to RWA (Milfont et al 2013).
Consequently, and in line with bidimensional models of ideology (eg Duckitt 2001), we might expect shared and unique predictive effects of RWA and SDO on red meat consumption related outcomes.We anticipate that those higher on RWA or SDO will both hold positive attitudes towards red meat; however, given their different motivations-rigid adherence to social norms among higher RWAs and feelings of dominance over nature among higher SDOs (Dhont andHodson 2014, Jylhä andAkrami 2015) -they could predict outcomes to meat reduction interventions in different ways.As such, examining both RWA and SDO would provide a more comprehensive understanding of the role of sociopolitical ideologies in red meat consumption and its relation to environmental concerns-something that cannot be ascertained by focusing on a liberal-conservative continuum, political identity, or RWA or SDO alone.
Because of the central role of trust, particularly in authorities, in people's behaviour (eg public health measures during COVID, Choma et al 2020), we also examined the link between sociopolitical ideology and peoples' trust of authorities about red meat specifically.Put another way, peoples' decisions to modify their diet for the environment likely also depends, at least partly, on the information they receive about whether red meat consumption impacts climate change.Individuals who endorse conservative ideologies are less trusting of scientific information about environmental and health outcomes (McCright et al 2013, Hamilton et al 2015).In general, people are more trusting of information that is in line with their previously held views.Here, we examined whether distrust (versus trust) in authorities is linked to willingness to modify red meat consumption, expecting that those higher in RWA or SDO are likely to be less trusting of organisations recommending people reduce their consumption of red meat.
To summarise, this study investigates similarities and potential discrepancies in how RWA and SDO relate to positive red meat attitudes, opposing reducing red meat consumption for the environment, and willingness to pay more for red meat to help the environment.We also test whether they are related to lower willingness to reduce red meat consumption, opposing the notion that beef production and consumption harm the environment, and distrust of (versus trust) authorities that espouse negative impacts of red meat.We anticipate that both RWA and SDO will relate to our variables of interest, however given their different motivations, they might differ in how strongly they predict each outcome or whether they uniquely predict outcomes.Because of discrepancies in the literature, it is unclear when RWA or SDO might emerge as the stronger unique predictor.Hence, the present study can help better understand possible nuance in how sociopolitical ideologies relate to red meat consumption attitudes in the context of climate change.
1. Method 1.1.Participants and procedure American adults (n = 456, mean age = 35.66;52.3% female) were recruited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk, see Buhrmester et al 2011) and paid $1US.Most participants declared their political orientation to be liberal (48.8%), 30.3% were conservative, and 20.9% indicated 'other'.A post-hoc power analysis based on a small effect size of .15revealed that statistical power was between 0.89 and 1.After consenting, participants completed measures of RWA, SDO, red meat attitudes, attitudes towards reducing red meat consumption, impact of agriculture on the environment, trust in organisations regarding the impact of red meat on the environment, willingness to reduce red meat consumption4 .All measures used in the current study are available on the open science framework: https://osf.io/3avhu/?view_only=84922ac89e2e466499defbc2109078ad.Ethical approval was obtained from the University's Research Ethics Board (REB).
1.2.Measures 1.2.1.Sociopolitical ideologies (RWA, SDO) To measure authoritarianism, participants completed a short 6-item version of the Authoritarianism-Conservatism-Traditionalism scale (2 items from each subscale, Choma et al 2020), indicating their agreement from 1-Strongly Oppose to 7-Strongly Favour (eg The 'old-fashioned ways' and 'old-fashioned values' still show the best way to live.).To measure SDO, participants responded to four items from the SDO scale (Pratto et al 2013), using a response scale from 1-Extremely Oppose to 7-Extremely Favour (eg We should NOT push for group equality.).Higher scores indicated greater endorsement of RWA (α = .81),and SDO (α = .85).

Attitudes towards red meat
Participants completed a 16-item scale developed by the authors, indicating the degree to which they agree with each statement on a scale from 1-Strongly Disagree to 5-Strongly Agree.This scale is based on a measure assessing attitudes towards hydraulic fracturing (Choma et al 2016) 5 .Participants responded to statements about red meat or red meat production as: enjoyable, socially important, nutritional, financially beneficial for the country, impacting the environment or climate change, and whether government should restrict industry.The items are listed in table 1. Participant scores were created based on factor analysis; results are presented in the Results section and table 1.

Attitudes towards reducing red meat consumption
Participants completed a 4-item measure developed by Hayley et al (2015).In response to the item, 'I think that reducing or restricting the amount of red meat I eat in my everyday diet would be/is K', participants indicated how beneficial/harmful, good/bad, pleasant/unpleasant, and worthwhile/pointless it would be on a scale from 1 to 7. The items were averaged with higher scores denoting opposition towards reducing red meat consumption (α = .92).

Impact of agriculture on the environment
Participants completed four items modified from Bostrom et al (2011): 'How much do you think agriculture and animal farming contribute to climate change?','In the coming years, how much do you think agriculture and animal farming will be negatively affected by climate change, eg water shortage'?, 'To the best of your knowledge, how much could agriculture and animal farming help reduce climate change?', and 'To what degree does 'cattle (red meat) production' impact climate change.Participants responded to the first two items using a response scale from 1-Not at all to 4-A great deal, the third item on a scale from 1-They cannot do anything to 5-They can do a great deal, and the last time on a scale from 1-A little to 3-A lot.Participants had the option 'I don't know' for the last two items; these were treated as missing data.A score was created by standardizing the four items and then averaging them (α = .84),with higher scores indicating a stronger belief that red meat is connected to climate change.

Willingness to engage in behavioral change
Participants indicated 'How much more [they would be] willing to pay for a pound of red meat (beef) if it would help': reduce the deforestation in the Amazon, protect the environment, reduce GHG emission, decrease water pollution, improve drinking water quality, and improve animal (cattle) welfare.Participants responded using a scale from 1-$0 to 6-$5.Score was created by averaging the items (α = .97),with higher scores indicating a higher willingness to pay more for red meat for environmental reasons.Additionally, participants indicated their willingness to reduce meat consumption for the environment, from 1-Not at all willing to 5-Extremely willing (Macdiarmid et al 2016).

Distrust in authoritiesF
A modified version of Krause et al (2014) was administered (Choma et al 2016).Using a response scale from 1-Completely/would not doubt to 7-Do not believe them at all, participants indicated the degree to which they trust information regarding food's influence on the environment, from: Environmental Organizations, Consumer Protection Organizations, and Colleges and Universities6 .A total score was created by averaging response to the three items.Higher scores indicated greater distrust.

Results
First, a principal component analysis was conducted on the 16 items from the Red Meat Attitudes scale, applying an oblique rotation (promax, with kappa set to 4).The loadings of the items on the three promax-rotated factors are shown in table 1.The first factor was defined by items about the effects of red meat production on climate change, preferences for red meat government regulations and perception of risk related to red meat production.Therefore, the first factor reflected (lower) risk perception attitudes towards red meat production.The second factor was defined by items related to the perceived positive impact of consuming red meat, including social, societal and health related benefits.Therefore, the second factor reflected (more positive) perceptions of red meat consumption.Finally, the third factor included two items each of which referred to attitudes towards potential red-meat focused solutions to climate change.The three factors were positively and significantly correlated.Three subscales were created by averaging the items for each scale.For the red meat risk perception attitudes scale (α = .88),relevant items were reversed scored so that higher scores indicated lower risk perception.The social and health benefits of red meat scale (α = .76)had higher scores indicating more positive perception regarding the health and social benefits of red meat consumption.The final two-item subscale based on factor 3, was named Attitudes to climate change solutions (r = .18,p < .001)with higher scores indicating more skepticism of the link between red meat and climate change.
Consistent with expectations, greater endorsement of RWA or SDO correlated positively with all subscales of favourable red meat attitudes, opposition to reducing red meat consumption, and distrust in environmental organizations, CPOs, and universities/colleges.Both RWA and SDO related negatively with perceiving agriculture as having a negative impact on the environment, willingness to pay more for red meat to protect the environment, and willingness to reduce red meat consumption.Means, standard deviations, and correlations are shown in table 2.
Regression analyses7 (table 3) revealed that stronger endorsement of RWA and SDO predicted perceiving red meat as posing little risk to the climate, disbelief that red meat impacts the environment, less willingness to  reduce red meat consumption and more distrust of environmental agencies, consumer protection agencies and universities/colleges.Stronger endorsement of RWA uniquely predicted positive perceptions benefits to red meat consumption, higher skepticism of the link between read meat and climate change, and more negative attitudes towards reducing red meat consumption, whereas stronger endorsement of SDO uniquely predicted less willingness to pay more for beef.We also ran the same regression analyses controlling for demographic variables.To do so, in Step 1 we entered age, gender, religious affiliation, ethnicity, income, education and urban/rural living.In Step 2, RWA and SDO were entered.Results remained the same across all dependant variables.

Discussion
Reducing the consumption of red meat is a viable strategy for tackling climate change (Springmann et al 2018).
Several hurdles exist to reducing red meat consumption; here, we investigated the role of sociopolitical ideology, namely, RWA and SDO.Our data show that preferences for traditionalism and strict social conventions (i.e. higher RWA) and endorsement of social inequality and group dominance (i.e. higher SDO) are connected to perceiving production of red meat as less risky to climate change, perceiving it as more beneficial to health and being more skeptical about meat related climate change solutions.RWA and SDO were also positively associated with perceiving red meat as posing little risk to the environment, as well as believing meat to be enjoyable, socially important, nutritional, and financially beneficial for the country.The present study also showed that those who more strongly endorsed RWA or SDO believed that reducing red meat consumption was more harmful, bad, unpleasant, and pointless.Those higher in RWA or SDO also indicated that they were less willing to reduce their consumption and less willing to pay more for red meat to potentially help the environment.In other words, right-wing beliefs may hinder the possibility of diet modification to eat less red meat.Our results reveal a nuanced view.We found that RWA and SDO performed similarly with the exceptions that RWA (but not SDO) uniquely predicted more positive perceptions of the social and health benefits of red meat, skepticism towards meat related climate change solutions8 , and attitudes about reducing red meat consumption, and SDO (but not RWA) uniquely predicted an unwillingness to pay more for red meat.In comparison to SDO, RWA was also more strongly related to red meat risk related attitudes and attitudes toward red meat consumption and impact of agriculture on environment.This highlights that the two dimensions can differ in their predictive power and value, hence showing the benefit of studying both.The results suggest that campaigns targeting red meat reduction in general, might be more effective if based on normative messages (i.e.messages that make the social norm salient) but campaigns trying to motivate more specific meat reducing action such as paying more for red meat might be more effective when emphasizing exclusivity scarcity, a strategy that works for those interested in establishing their status (Hamilton et al 2019).Additionally, campaigns should seek to highlight how red meat substitutes could still meet health and social goals, or alternatively how those goals could be met through reduced consumption of red meat.
The finding that those higher in RWA (to a greater extent) or SDO (to a lesser extent) believed red meat and agriculture can negatively impact the environment, suggests that raising awareness about the role of red meat could be effective.Our findings on trust (versus distrust) of various authorities, however, temper the notion that raising awareness and knowledge could help promote reductions in red meat consumption.We found that that those higher in RWA and SDO are far less trusting of information from agencies that mostly share information that counters their existing beliefs about red meat such as Environmental Organisations, Consumer Protection Organisations or Colleges/ Universities.This pattern of results mirrors other research showing a greater distrust of science about the environment by those on the politically conservative (versus liberal) end of the political spectrum (McCright et al 2013, Hamilton et al 2015, Choma et al 2016).Research shows that framing environmental issues in terms of purity-a moral value of higher priority to those on the right-can shift conservatives' environmental attitudes such that they are on par with their liberal counterparts (Feinberg and Willer 2012).Given this, awareness-raising efforts might need to incorporate moral reframing.
It is important to acknowledge some limitations of the current research.First, the research is cross-sectional and cannot address questions of causality.Second, although our sample was varied in terms of age, income, religious affiliation, and gender, it consisted primarily of white Americans, many of whom leaned left of centre.
001.RWA = right-wing authoritarianism, SDO = social dominance orientation, RMA 1 = Red meat risk perception attitudes, RMA 2 = Social and health benefits of red meat , RMA 3 = Attitudes to climate change solutions, RMC = attitudes towards red meat consumption, Impact = Impact of agriculture on the environment, Pay: Willingness to pay more for meat; Reduce = Willingness to reduce red meat consumption.

Table 1 .
Results of the principal component analysis of the Red Meat Attitudes scale.
These results are consistent with previous research showing a link between conservative political leaning with red meat consumption and related attitudes (Allen et al 2000, Dhont and Hodson 2014, Veser et al 2015, Pfeiler and Egloff 2018, Nezlek and Forestell 2019), There are discrepancies as to which political dimension more strongly predicts environmental attitudes and behaviours (eg Milfont et al 2013, Stanley et al 2017) .