Purpose: – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the barriers perceived by consumers to lowering their meat consumption levels and adopting a plant-based diet, which means a diet that includes mainly non-meat foods, yet it can contain both vegetarian and meat meals.Design/methodology/approach: – The prevalence of different barriers for following a plant-based diet is addressed, as well as consumer profiles considering socio-demographics, values and meat consumption frequencies. The data were collected in 2010 by a survey questionnaire, sent to 4,000 randomly selected Finns (response rate=47.3,n=1,890).Findings: – Different types of barriers are perceived to hinder the adoption of a plant-based diet, including meat enjoyment, eating routines, health conceptions and difficulties in preparing vegetarian foods. These barriers are strongly correlated, indicating that consumers may not make qualitative difference between different barriers. Furthermore, there are distinct socio-demographic, value and especially meat consumption frequency elements that strengthen the barrier perception, these being male gender, young age, rural residence, household type of families with children, low education, absence of a vegetarian family member or friend, valuation of traditions and wealth and high meat consumption frequency.Social implications: – High meat consumption is related to many environmental and public health problems. The results call for multifaceted policy implications that should concentrate on different barriers and certain socio-demographic, value and meat eating groups. Importantly, focus should be not only on the group with the strongest barrier perception but also on those particularly willing to make changes in their meat consumption patterns. One practical implication could be to increase the availability of vegetarian foods in public cafeterias or school canteens, as a decrease in meat consumption frequency is strongly correlated with the alleviation of the barrier perception.Originality/value: – Information about differences in socio-demographics, values and meat consumption frequencies between consumers provide opportunities for focussing policy actions to aid the adoption of a plant-based diet.

There are differences across Europe in elements of climate citizenship, including climate concern, perceived responsibility, and willingness to support and take climate action. This paper examines how individual-level climate perceptions correspond to a country's contribution to climate change and its ability to develop climate policies. Data from the European Social Survey Round 8 (23 European countries, n = 44,387) was used to explore how national-level factors (affluence as per capita GDP, carbon emissions as per capita CO2 emissions, and democracy as electoral democracy index) are related to individual-level climate perceptions (climate concern, perceived climate responsibility, climate policy support, and personal climate action). The analysis shows that the studied individual-level perceptions are all linked, and that perceived climate responsibility is a factor that helps in understanding how individual-level climate views are connected. Further, national-level affluence and democracy are connected to stronger individual-level perceptions both directly and through mediating their connections. Our results suggest that achieving ambitious climate policy targets in Europe could benefit from focusing on the role of perceived climate responsibility in boosting policy support and action. Moreover, the connection between national-level (democratic and economic) factors and public climate perceptions emphasises the need to place climate policies in a wider context.

High meat consumption appears regularly in sustainability discourses but finding practical tools for reduction has proven to be challenging. The rise of social media has opened up new pathways to structure political spaces where grassroots initiatives for experiments can take place. Our paper examines how consumer-citizens started experimenting with vegetarian foods in the context of an innovative Finnish meat reduction social media campaign called Meatless October during its kick-off year in 2013. The focus is on participants’ perceptions of the campaign and reflections of the experiment process. We analyzed participants’ blog posts by using a qualitative content analysis. Our results show that the participants were often strongly motivated by the campaign’s sustainability frame. They also saw the campaign both as a communal challenge and an opportunity for political action, sharing know-how and experiences with the other participants. In everyday life, participants’ main focus and worry were in being able to prepare tasty and healthy vegetarian foods, and they were positively surprised by their ability to learn these skills. Participants typically attributed both success and failure in experimenting to their individual capabilities. Overall, our study suggests that the campaign’s public context pushed private practices towards change by facilitating the experimenting process.