Those on the political right engage in greater meat consumption and animal exploitation than their left-wing counterparts. Previous research suggests this is because they view vegetarianism as threatening the nation’s dietary customs and economy. Across two studies, I extend this concept of “vegetarianism threat” by showing that it separates into two distinct dimensions of concern: cultural (symbolic) threats and economic (realistic) threats. The resultant multidimensional scale allows a finer grained understanding of the roots of ideology-based threat responses to meat-free movements. Together, results implicate symbolic concerns as the key element of vegetarianism threat contributing to negative attitudes towards meat abstention and its proponents.

与左翼同行相比，政治右翼的人从事更多的肉类消费和动物剥削。先前的研究表明，这是因为他们认为素食主义威胁着国家的饮食习惯和经济。在两项研究中，我扩展了“素食主义威胁”的概念，将其分为两个不同的关注维度：文化（象征性）威胁和经济（现实）威胁。由此产生的多维量表可以更细致地理解基于意识形态的对无肉运动的威胁反应的根源。总之，结果表明象征性的担忧是素食主义威胁的关键因素，导致对禁肉及其支持者的消极态度。