Despite increasing concerns about animal welfare and the general prevalence of meat-eating practices, little attention has been paid in the consumer behavior literature to understanding consumer guilt around meat consumption. This research fills this void by exploring how consumers behave when animals are anthropomorphized, which can cause moral concerns to arise regarding the harm inflicted upon animals. We found that animal anthropomorphism can reduce meat consumption when consumers already have a low commitment to eating meat. However, the majority of consumers do not reduce their meat consumption in the face of animal anthropomorphism. Instead, they choose healthier meat dishes over less healthy but tastier meat dishes because the health benefits of meat consumption provide a strong excuse for eating meat, thereby dissipating their guilt about animal suffering. We demonstrate that guilt reduction is the underlying process mechanism and that the humane treatment of meat animals, which alleviates guilt about animal suffering, attenuates the effect of animal anthropomorphism on the choice of healthy meat dishes.

中文翻译：

---

肉食消费者的内疚：当动物拟人导致健康的肉类菜肴选择

尽管人们越来越关注动物福利和肉食习惯的普遍流行，但消费者行为文献很少关注了解消费者对肉类消费的内疚感。这项研究通过探索当动物被拟人化时消费者的行为来填补这一空白，这可能会引起关于对动物造成的伤害的道德问题。我们发现，当消费者对吃肉的承诺已经很低时，动物拟人化可以减少肉类消费。然而，面对动物拟人化，大多数消费者并没有减少肉类消费。相反，他们选择更健康的肉类菜肴而不是不太健康但更美味的肉类菜肴，因为肉类消费的健康益处为吃肉提供了强有力的借口，从而消除他们对动物痛苦的内疚。我们证明了内疚减少是潜在的过程机制，肉食动物的人道待遇减轻了对动物痛苦的内疚感，减弱了动物拟人化对健康肉类菜肴选择的影响。