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The widespread demand for animal-sourced foods poses challenges in addressing climate change due to their significant greenhouse gas emissions. Alternative proteins like cultured meat show promise with lower greenhouse gas emissions, but have faced public resistance, posing substantial barriers to their broad development and adoption. This paper reports a survey that examined the perceived naturalness of protein sources as an important factor that predicts perceived risks, benefits, and support for consumption. A diverse sample from the United States considered six different protein technologies, including three newer alternative proteins such as cultured meat and three more conventional proteins. Newer alternative proteins were perceived as less natural and were less supported than conventional proteins. Additionally, the more participants perceived protein sources as natural, the less risky and more beneficial they perceived them to be, contributing to their support. These results suggest that perceived naturalness, and associated risks and benefits, could be an important factor in shaping public support for or opposition to new proteins. These findings have theoretical and broader implications for the development and adoption of sustainability technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The widespread demand for animal-sourced foods poses challenges in addressing climate change due to their significant greenhouse gas emissions. Alternative proteins like cultured meat show promise with lower greenhouse gas emissions, but have faced public resistance, posing substantial barriers to their broad development and adoption. This paper reports a survey that examined the perceived naturalness of protein sources as an important factor that predicts perceived risks, benefits, and support for consumption. A diverse sample from the United States considered six different protein technologies, including three newer alternative proteins such as cultured meat and three more conventional proteins. Newer alternative proteins were perceived as less natural and were less supported than conventional proteins. Additionally, the more participants perceived protein sources as natural, the less risky and more beneficial they perceived them to be, contributing to their support. These results suggest that perceived naturalness, and associated risks and benefits, could be an important factor in shaping public support for or opposition to new proteins. These findings have theoretical and broader implications for the development and adoption of sustainability technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past decade has seen an acceleration, globally, in the development of alternative protein products that resemble animal meat products. These products include cultivated and plant-based meat, as well as those derived through fermentation processes. Proponents of alternative proteins claim that they offer opportunities to tackle multiple socio-environmental challenges. However, their development also presents many challenges, which require careful analysis. To this end, this paper addresses the research question: To what extent can the socio-technical transitions literature explain the current state and future potential of plant-based meat and cultivated meat products, including the impacts and challenges associated with these emerging technologies? This paper reviews the literature on alternative proteins from a socio-technical transitions perspective applying the Multi Level Perspective and the Strategic Niche Management approaches, and identifies a research agenda of knowledge gaps and research questions. The review is focused on the United States due to its central role in the development of these technologies. The agenda identifies key questions that can be asked of alternative proteins using a socio-technical transitions framework, and maps them to the niche level, the niche-regime interactions level, and to the heuristic dynamics of the Multi Level Perspective. The findings suggest that meeting the full potential of these technologies requires public investment and long term planning, open access research, more strategic funding, efforts to advance regulation and social legitimacy, innovation in business models, and learning from social movements, other industries, and the visions of fringe stakeholders. This paper demonstrates that examining the scaling and trajectory of alternative proteins from a socio-technical sustainability transitions perspective could offer useful and important lessons and insights into the current and future role of these technologies. • A review of the alt-protein literature from a socio-technical transitions perspective. • The multi-level perspective and the strategic niche management approach are used. • A research agenda for cultivated meat and plant-based meat is identified. • Alt-protein niches are interacting with and challenging the animal meat regime. • Actors, institutions, and processes interact to influence alt-protein trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]