Professor Thomas Otter, from Goethe University Frankfurt, will present his research. 

Sizing the market for plant-based meat replacements

We quantify the market potential for plant-based meat replacements — a fast-growing category with major implications for reducing food-related emissions. Despite their relevance, PBMRs remain niche, as many consumers still exclude them from their diets. To explore behavioral barriers, we build a unique dataset linking actual grocery purchases with survey responses on product consideration, attitudes, and knowledge of plant-based foods and meat’s environmental impact. We propose a novel demand model that combines revealed and stated consideration and find that consideration is mainly driven by consumer attitudes — particularly taste perceptions, cooking familiarity, and meat-eating habits — while demographics explain little beyond generational differences. Counterfactual simulations show that addressing experiential barriers could substantially boost market share. For instance, if consumers perceived PBMRs’ taste and texture as comparable to meat, market share would rise by 6.2 percentage points. In contrast, increasing awareness of environmental and health impacts yields only modest gains. Our findings offer actionable insights: Millennials in mid-sized West German cities (100–500k inhabitants) increase plant-based purchases by up to 2.3 percentage points more than Baby Boomers in small East German towns (<20k) when cooking familiarity improves. Overall, the main obstacles to adoption are experiential, not informational or economic. Campaigns should therefore focus on improving taste, familiarity, and ease of preparation rather than solely raising awareness.