PRELIMINARY DRAFT — These questions are still being refined. Your feedback will help shape the final formulations.
The Unjournal · Pivotal Questions Initiative

Plant-Based Substitution
Pivotal Questions

State your beliefs on cross-price elasticity, substitution effects, and the animal welfare case for PBA funding.

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Note: These questions are preliminary drafts. We're refining them based on feedback from researchers and stakeholders.

These are operationalized questions from our Plant-Based Substitution Pivotal Questions project. We want to elicit expert and stakeholder beliefs—before, during, and after reviewing the evidence—to understand where consensus exists and where key uncertainties remain. (All questions are optional.)

📋 Full question specifications: For more detail, context, and the complete set of operationalized questions, see the PBA Pivotal Questions on EA Forum and the canonical PQ formulations on Coda →

You don't need to be an agricultural economist to contribute. We want your honest assessment and reasoning, whether you feel highly confident or very uncertain.

🔮 Related forecasting: This project connects to The Unjournal's Animal Welfare Forecasting Tournament in collaboration with Metaculus. Some of these questions are also posted on Metaculus.

Background note: the elasticity & PBM-substitution PQ report (methodological survey, Bray et al. validation case, PBM study cards, interactive dashboard) and a shorter first-pass summary of PBA penetration and taste-comparability may be useful context before answering. Both should be treated as preliminary.

How to respond

Shared Definitions

PBAs / IB+: High-quality plant-based meat alternatives designed to closely imitate animal products. This includes Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat, and similar products. We focus on "hamburger-imitating" products as the reference case, though questions may also consider chicken nuggets and other forms.

We are not including traditional vegetarian products (e.g., veggie burgers, tofu) that don't aim to closely imitate meat texture and taste.

Price fall: A permanent reduction in retail prices across all US grocery stores (with global extrapolation implied).

"As a result of supply-side factors": We imagine this price change is caused by an external investment leading to innovation or increased production capacity—not by changing consumer preferences. This avoids endogeneity concerns where price changes and demand changes are both driven by the same underlying factor.

Examples: R&D breakthroughs, production subsidies, regulatory changes, or changes in market structure that reduce marginal costs.

Cross-price elasticity: The percentage change in demand for one product (e.g., chicken) resulting from a 1% change in the price of another product (e.g., plant-based burgers). By standard convention:

  • Positive → substitutes: if PBA price rises 1%, chicken demand rises (people shift toward chicken)
  • Negative → complements: if PBA price rises, chicken demand falls too
  • Near zero → largely independent

Connection to PBA_01: PBA_01 asks for the change in chicken demand from a PBA price reduction. For a substitute (elasticity > 0), a 10% price fall gives elasticity × (−10%) — so the expected PBA_01 answer is negative (chicken falls). The E1 section below lets you state elasticities directly. Note: some studies surprisingly find complements — results across the literature are "all over the map."

For questions comparing animal welfare outcomes, we leave the specific metric to your judgment. Possible framings include:

  • Welfare-footprint-style measures (suffering-years averted)
  • Number of factory-farmed animals affected
  • Your preferred metric considering both quantity and quality of life impacts

The key comparison is usually: PBA funding vs. corporate welfare campaigns (e.g., The Humane League's chicken welfare campaigns).

When we ask for a probability, we're asking for your best calibrated subjective probability—your honest credence given everything you know.

One way to think about this: Imagine an ideal research team with unlimited resources, time, and data—perhaps even a kind of omniscience where they could perfectly understand the welfare and psychological states of everyone affected. What probability would you assign that this idealized team would ultimately conclude the statement is true?

Note: We avoid anchoring to "0% = impossible" and "100% = certain" because perfect certainty is rarely justified. If you believe something is extremely unlikely but not literally impossible, you might say 2-5%; if nearly certain but not absolutely, perhaps 95-98%.

PBA_01 · Focal Question · Substitution Effect · Metaculus →

If the price of high-quality plant-based hamburgers fell by 10% everywhere, how would global chicken consumption change?

More precisely: If the price of "IB+" products fell by 10% due to supply-side factors, what percent change would we see in factory-farmed chicken consumption the following year?

This is our focal empirical question. The answer directly informs whether PBA cost-reduction is an effective animal welfare strategy.

TLDR: Impossible Beef is a well-defined product category with clear pricing and high quality, but chicken consumption is far more animal-welfare-relevant than beef. We ask about this cross-category effect because it captures the pathway with the highest stakes.

Why plant-based beef as the intervention? Products like Impossible Burger and Beyond Burger are well-defined, nationally available, and widely discussed in terms of price parity. Unlike plant-based chicken alternatives, which vary significantly in quality and form across brands, these hamburger imitators provide a clean, measurable reference case for price-change scenarios.

Why measure the effect on chicken? From an animal welfare perspective, chicken consumption has far higher stakes than beef. Producing a given weight of chicken meat involves many more animals (and arguably more suffering per calorie) than beef. If cheaper plant-based burgers lead even some consumers to eat fewer chickens — perhaps by normalizing plant-based eating or by directly replacing chicken meals — that effect matters enormously for animal welfare, even though it crosses product categories.

Is this realistic? Cross-category substitution may seem counter-intuitive, but the evidence is mixed. Some consumers may treat all meats as partially interchangeable with PBAs, while others substitute strictly within categories. We also consider within-category variants (e.g., PBA chicken nuggets replacing chicken). See the EA Forum discussion: Why chicken? and Why Impossible/Beyond Beef? for more detail.

  • Target: US consumption (extrapolate to global); both home and restaurant
  • Timeframe: Effect in the year following the price change
  • "Factory-farmed chickens" = broiler chickens raised in conventional production systems
  • Variants we may also ask about: 5% and 20% price reductions; effects on beef, pork, fish
%

Example: -0.5 means a 0.5% reduction in chicken consumption. Zero means no effect.

An 80% credible interval represents the range you believe has an 80% probability of containing the true value. There should be roughly a 10% chance the true value is below your lower bound, and a 10% chance it's above your upper bound.

This is more informative than a single "confidence" percentage because it captures both your best guess and how uncertain you are. For help calibrating your uncertainty estimates, try the Clearer Thinking calibration tool.

E1 · Cross-Price Elasticities · Companion to PBA_01

What are the key cross-price elasticities between conventional meats and plant-based alternatives?

Interpreted as average arc price elasticities in the relevant range — the average percentage change in demand for Y per 1% change in the price of X, computed over a realistic range of price variation around current market levels (roughly ±20%).

Arc vs. point elasticity: A point elasticity is estimated at a single price; an arc elasticity averages over a range. Arc elasticities are more robust for policy purposes — they don't require committing to behavior at an exact price and better capture variation observed in real data. We frame the question this way to avoid arguments about which price point to use.

Sign convention:

  • Positive → X and Y are substitutes: a higher price for X shifts demand toward Y (expected for chicken/beef, and for PBA/meat if they compete)
  • Negative → X and Y are complements: a higher price for X depresses demand for Y (counterintuitive, but found in some scanner studies for PBA/meat — likely a measurement artifact from endogeneity)
  • Near zero → largely independent in this market

Connection to PBA_01: Your estimate for η(chicken demand, PBA beef price) directly links to PBA_01. A 10% PBA price reduction implies % change in chicken consumption ≈ η × (−10%). So η = 0.05 → −0.5% chicken (a small substitute effect). η = 0 → no effect. This lets you check internal consistency between your E1 and PBA_01 answers.

Leave any pair blank if you don't have a view. Positive = substitutes; negative = complements.

Product pair (% change in Y demand per 1% change in price of X)
Central
CI lower
CI upper
η(chicken demand, beef price) Beef gets 1% more expensive → chicken consumption changes by ___
η(beef demand, chicken price) Chicken gets 1% more expensive → beef consumption changes by ___
PBA beef = Impossible Burger / Beyond Beef and similar high-quality hamburger-imitating products at current or near-current market prices
η(chicken demand, PBA beef price) PBA beef gets 1% cheaper → chicken consumption changes by ___  [multiply by −10 to get your PBA_01 answer]
η(beef demand, PBA beef price) PBA beef gets 1% cheaper → conventional beef consumption changes by ___
PBA_04 · Consumer Composition

What share of regular plant-based meat alternative purchasers are vegetarian or vegan?

Among households that regularly buy PBMA products (Impossible, Beyond, etc.), what percentage are vegetarian or vegan households? The remainder are omnivores who also buy conventional meat.

This shapes the animal welfare case for PBA. If most buyers are already non-meat-eaters, PBA may not displace much animal consumption. If most are omnivores, the substitution potential is much larger. Evidence from one study suggests as few as 1% of high-spending PBMA households are vegetarian — but this is contested and worth eliciting directly.

If the vast majority of PBA buyers are omnivores, then PBA products are reaching people who regularly eat meat — and a price reduction or quality improvement could plausibly shift some of their consumption toward PBA. If PBA buyers are mostly vegetarians, the products are largely serving people who were already not eating meat, and price/quality improvements don't displace animal product consumption.

A NotebookLM synthesis of the empirical literature (May 2026) found that evidence "strongly suggests that the vast majority of consumers who purchase plant-based meat alternatives are not vegetarians or vegans, but rather omnivores who also buy traditional meat." One cited study finds only ~1% of high-spending PBMA households are vegetarian. However, the reliability and scope of these studies is uncertain — this is itself a contested empirical question.

%

Example: 15 means you think about 15% of PBMA purchasers are vegetarian or vegan; the other 85% are omnivores.

PBA_02 · Goal Question · Investment Value · Metaculus →

Is PBA research/development a good investment from an animal welfare perspective?

Do PBAs displace animal-welfare-relevant animal product consumption enough to make investments in reducing their cost plausibly competitive with other animal welfare interventions?

PBA_03 · Metaculus · Comparison · Metaculus →

Does the animal welfare benefit of $100K to GFI for PBA development exceed $100K to THL for corporate campaigns?

Compare: donating $100,000 in 2026 to the Good Food Institute to fund PBA cost reduction and availability vs. donating $100,000 to The Humane League's corporate animal welfare campaigns for chickens.

This frames the question in decision-relevant terms for funders choosing between these interventions. See related questions on Metaculus →

30%
PBA_06 · Methodological

Can cross-price elasticities be reliably estimated in this context?

Given selection effects, endogeneity concerns, and data limitations, how much should we trust existing estimates?

PBA_07 · Research Design

What experimental trial would yield useful cross-price elasticity estimates?

If you could design a study to credibly estimate substitution effects, what would it look like?

PBA_08 · Decision Threshold

What cross-price elasticity would justify funding PBA R&D?

How high would the cross-price elasticity between PBAs and chicken need to be to make PBA funding competitive with other AW interventions?

Example: 0.1 means a 10% PBA price drop leads to 1% chicken demand change

PBA_09 · Broader Substitution

How would a 10% PBA price reduction affect other product categories?

Beyond chicken, estimate the effect on other categories. Negative = reduction in consumption of that product; positive = increase (complement effect).

%
%
%
%

It's fine to leave categories blank. Sign matters: negative means PBA is a substitute (reduces that product's consumption); positive means it's a complement.

E.g., if beef gets more expensive by 10%, how much does chicken consumption change? Is the cross-elasticity within meat categories larger or smaller than the PBA-to-meat elasticity?

Methodological Credibility

How credible is each method for estimating PBA substitution effects?

A working hypothesis going into this workshop: "No existing method has been demonstrated to produce reliable estimates of PBA substitution effects — existing results are all over the map." Rate each approach and share where you'd push back on this view.

1 = not credible / not applicable  ·  3 = useful but limited  ·  5 = highly credible

Scanner data demand estimation (AIDS/QAIDS, IRI/Nielsen)
Hypothetical / stated-preference choice experiments (surveys)
Event studies (purchase behavior around first PBA buy)
Retail field experiments (randomized price/placement interventions)
Structural models of demand with instruments (BLP, IV approaches)
Analogies from related markets (e.g., plant-based milk substitution for dairy; Slade 2023, Stewart et al. 2020)
Cafeteria / institutional field experiments (expanding vegetarian options; Garnett 2019, Pechey 2022)
Flexible counterfactual / matrix completion methods (Freitas-Groff et al. 2024)

About You

Your responses will inform our evidence synthesis and workshop discussions.

Questions adapted from the Plant-Based Substitution PQ formulations (codes PBA_01–08). Draft version, February 2026.

Submit Workshop Availability → About This Workshop → Metaculus: PBA Substitution →