Health, environmental, and animal rights motives for vegetarian eating

TLDR

Health, environmental, and animal‑rights concerns are the three primary reasons for vegetarianism in Western societies, yet it remains unclear whether these motives can be empirically distinguished or which individuals are driven by each. The study aimed to validate distinct health, environmental, and animal‑rights motives for vegetarian eating, examine their demographic, behavioral, and personality correlates across diverse samples, and assess how these motives predict responses to advocacy materials. The authors developed a 15‑item Vegetarian Eating Motives Inventory, validated its invariant structure across three large, multilingual samples, and used it to assess motive distinctions and their associations. Health motives were the most common and broadly associated with communal and agentic values, while environmental and animal‑rights motives, though less correlated with other variables, strongly predicted reactions to advocacy materials, demonstrating the inventory’s utility for researchers and campaigners.

Abstract

Health, the environment, and animal rights represent the three main reasons people cite for vegetarian diet in Western societies. However, it has not been shown that these motives can be distinguished empirically, and little is known about what kind of people are likely to be compelled by these different motives. This study had three goals. First, we aimed to use construct validation to test whether develop health, environmental, and animal rights motives for a vegetarian diet could be distinguished. Second, we evaluated whether these motivations were associated with different demographic, behavioral, and personality profiles in three diverse samples. Third, we examined whether peoples’ motivations were related to responses to vegetarian advocacy materials. We created the Vegetarian Eating Motives Inventory, a 15-item measure whose structure was invariant across three samples (N = 1006, 1004, 5478) and two languages (English and Dutch). Using this measure, we found that health was the most common motive for non-vegetarians to consider vegetarian diets and it had the broadest array of correlates, which primarily involved communal and agentic values. Correlates of environmental and animal rights motives were limited, but these motives were strong and specific predictors of advocacy materials in a fourth sample (N = 739). These results provide researchers with a useful tool for identifying vegetarian motives among both vegetarian and non-vegetarian respondents, offer useful insights into the nomological net of vegetarian motivations, and provide advocates with guidance about how to best target campaigns promoting a vegetarian diet.