Guilt of the Meat-Eating Consumer: When Animal Anthropomorphism Leads to Healthy Meat Dish Choices

Despite increasing concerns about animal welfare and the general prevalence of meat-eating practices, little attention has been paid in the consumer behavior literature to understanding consumer guilt around meat consumption. This research fills this void by exploring how consumers behave when animals are anthropomorphized, which can cause moral concerns to arise regarding the harm inflicted upon animals. We found that animal anthropomorphism can reduce meat consumption when consumers already have a low commitment to eating meat. However, the majority of consumers do not reduce their meat consumption in the face of animal anthropomorphism. Instead, they choose healthier meat dishes over less healthy but tastier meat dishes because the health benefits of meat consumption provide a strong excuse for eating meat, thereby dissipating their guilt about animal suffering. We demonstrate that guilt reduction is the underlying process mechanism and that the humane treatment of meat animals, which alleviates guilt about animal suffering, attenuates the effect of animal anthropomorphism on the choice of healthy meat dishes.