Questions adapted from the Plant-Based Substitution PQ formulations (codes PBA_01–08). Draft version, February 2026.
State your beliefs on cross-price elasticity, substitution effects, and the animal welfare case for PBA funding.
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.
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).
Note: Some studies surprisingly find PBAs and certain meats are complements (possibly because flexitarians buy both), while others find substitution effects, especially for chicken.
For questions comparing animal welfare outcomes, we leave the specific metric to your judgment. Possible framings include:
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%.
Questions adapted from the Plant-Based Substitution PQ formulations (codes PBA_01–08). Draft version, February 2026.