You Are What You Eat and So Is Our Planet: Identifying Dietary Groups Based on Personality and Environmentalism

Behavioral change interventions promoting the reduction of animal product consumption are valuable tools to improve ecological sustainability as well as public health and help the mitigation of climate change. Recent findings revealed improved efficacy of interventions targeted at barriers (e.g., self-efficacy) of three different types of meat consumers over non-targeted interventions (e.g., completion of unrelated surveys). However, such interventions have yet to factor in the role of individual differences in personality. Therefore, in a first step, we performed segmentation analysis on barriers and benefits of reducing animal product consumption (e.g., meat attachment, environmentalism) with the inclusion of personality. In an online sample of N = 1135 participants, latent profile analysis revealed five distinct dietary groups: “plant-based eaters”, “meat-reducers”, “medium-hindrance meat eaters”, “medium strong-hindrance meat eaters, and “strong-hindrance meat eaters”, based on inhibitors and facilitators of meat reduction. Groups differed in terms of consumption of different animal products ( η 2 = 0.08 to η 2 = 0.80 ) as well as the Big Five ( η 2 = 0.08 to η 2 = 0.80 ) and Dark Triad ( η 2 = 0.08 to η 2 = 0.80 ). Strong-hindrance meat eaters were characterized by low Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Openness as well as high dark trait expression, implying new targets for future intervention design.