Challenging cultured meat naturalness perceptions: The role of consumers’ mindset

Cultured meat, produced through in vitro cultivation of animal cells, has emerged as a promising solution to environmental, health, and ethical issues resulting from conventional meat production. However, acceptance remains a crucial challenge, significantly influenced by perceptions of unnaturalness. Previous research has demonstrated the limited success of messaging strategies aimed at countering these perceptions. Across two experimental studies, this research breaks new ground by examining these strategies through the lens of mindset theory-i.e., beliefs about the fixedness or malleability of human attributes. In Study 1, we present findings illustrating that a strategy challenging the importance of naturalness is effective at increasing cultured meat acceptance among consumers with a growth mindset. In Study 2, we demonstrate how complementing such messaging strategy with a specific form of creative narrative can make it effective among consumers with a fixed mindset too. Our findings are informative theoretically, extending mindset and narrative theories to the context of cultured meat and, practically, examining the effectiveness of different communication strategies in driving consumer acceptance of the product.


Introduction
The potential advent of what has been variously labelled as, among others, cultured, lab-grown, lab-based, artificial, synthetic, cultivated, clean, in-vitro, or cell-based meat-and henceforth, cultured meat-has been frequently heralded in media and research outlets as representing the future of food (Bertero et al., 2023;Bushnell, Specht, & Almy, 2022;Rogers, 2023;Wilson, 2022).This is largely due to the perceived potential of cultured meat to help solve many of the concerns related to current meat production systems, such as health, animal welfare, sustainability, and food security (Treich, 2021).As such, a transition to cultured meat has been considered by some scholars as a critical stride towards achieving the United Nation's Sustainability Development Goals (Newman et al., 2023).Some advocates even posit that cultured meat adoption might reach further, triggering a positive feedback loop that could influence areas such as economic and social development (Nobre, 2022).
Despite the uncertainties surrounding the potential benefits of embracing cultured meat (Chriki, Ellies-Oury, & Hocquette, 2022;Chriki & Hocquette, 2020), an eventual transition to the product can result in a positive-sum game, where consumers, animals, the environment, and society at large stand to benefit (Pakseresht, Ahmadi Kaliji, & Canavari, 2022).However, it is widely recognized that consumers' actions are often not motivated by the potential benefits of adopting a product or behavior (Kahneman, 2013;Trevisan, 2016).Consistent with this, research has demonstrated that cultured meat acceptance among consumers is relatively low (Onwezen, Bouwman, Reinders, & Dagevos, 2021).Acknowledging that the market success of cultured meat hinges on consumers' acceptance of the product, this immediately begs the question of how to mitigate consumers' resistance to it.Even though cultured meat is not yet widely available commercially (Bushnell et al., 2022), regulation is moving fast.The FDA, recently granted approval for its sale (Thompson, 2023) in the US, and the Good Food Institute is actively seeking its approval in the European Union (GFI, 2023).Other major economies, like Japan (Southey, 2023) and Australia (Broom, 2023), are also backing the sale of cultured meat in their respective markets (though see Kirby, 2023, p. 29).
Here, we focus on a prominent obstacle to cultured meat acceptance: the perception of its unnaturalness.As Pakseresht et al. (2022, p. 8) highlight, naturalness "has a decisive role in the consumer acceptance of novel food".Accordingly, investigating naturalness perceptions has been identified as a pivotal effort in cultured meat research (C.Bryant, Szejda, Parekh, Deshpande, & Tse, 2019;Gómez-Luciano, de Aguiar, Vriesekoop, & Urbano, 2019;Pakseresht et al., 2022;Siegrist, Sütterlin, & Hartmann, 2018), with some authors even identifying perceptions of unnaturalness as the element that have the greatest impact on acceptance of the product (C.J. Bryant, Szejda, et al., 2019).Yet, research on strategies to successfully approach such perceptions is scant (Kouarfaté & Durif, 2023;Pakseresht et al., 2022).Some approaches, such as describing the production process of cultured meat in a less technical fashion (Siegrist et al., 2018) or directly addressing beliefs about what is natural or why it should not matter, have shown limited or no success in nudging consumers' intentions (Anderson & Bryant, 2018; C. J. Bryant, Szejda, et al., 2019).
Our goal in this paper is to explore a subset of these messaging strategies, specifically those that challenge consumers' lay belief that natural products are good, and then that naturalness should be used as a criterion for judging cultured meat (Anderson & Bryant, 2018;C. J. Bryant, Szejda, et al., 2019).We apply the psychological paradigm of mindsets (Chiu, Dweck, Tong, & Fu, 1997;Dweck & Leggett, 1988), which focuses on people's implicit conceptions about the fixedness and malleability of human attributes (Dweck & Leggett, 1988).We demonstrate that messaging strategies that de-emphasize the importance of naturalness are successful among a specific, yet prominent consumer segment: individuals with a growth mindset-i.e., those who view human traits as malleable or changeable.Additionally, building on recent consumer behavior findings on creative process descriptions (Miceli, Scopelliti, & Raimondo, 2020;Septianto, Rostiani, & Paramita, 2022), we show that complementing this messaging strategy with details about the creative process behind cultured meat can likewise make it effective among consumers with a fixed mindset-i.e., those who believe that human traits are stable or immutable.More accurately, we underline the usefulness of highlighting the effort or hard work (versus the insight or inspiration) that goes into the creative process behind cultured meat when targeting fixed mindset consumers.
We contribute to research and practice in several ways.First, we expand on the existing research regarding the acceptance of cultured meat by exploring ways to lessen the negative effects of perceived unnaturalness.Second, we incorporate the theoretical framework of mindsets, thus far overlooked in cultured meat research-and, to the extent of our knowledge, in food neophobia research in general-despite its noticeable role in consumer behavior (Murphy & Dweck, 2016).Third, we provide insights into how emphasizing specific parts of the creative process behind a product can make it more acceptable to consumers (Miceli et al., 2020;Septianto et al., 2022).Finally, our findings provide insights that may be of interest to organizations and stakeholders exploring consumer acceptance of cultured meat products.
In the sections that follow, we present the idea of naturalness and discuss the concepts of growth and fixed mindsets.Next, we explain how creative process narratives can be used to mitigate the impact of mindsets on the proposed effects.Then, we test our hypotheses in two experimental studies and discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.
A well-documented barrier to cultured meat acceptance which has been identified in a wealth of research (e.g., Chriki et al., 2021;Fidder & Graça, 2023;Hartmann, Furtwaengler, & Siegrist, 2022;Liu, Hocquette, Ellies-Oury, Chriki, & Hocquette, 2021;Siegrist et al., 2018;Wilks, Hornsey, & Bloom, 2021), including studies with cross-cultural samples (e.g., J. Liu, Chriki, et al., 2023;Siegrist & Hartmann, 2020), is unnaturalness perceptions.These perceptions are posited as one of the most (Bryant & Barnett, 2020;Pakseresht et al., 2022), if not the most (C.J. Bryant, Szejda, et al., 2019), important determinant(s) accounting for differences in cultured meat acceptability (for an opposing view, see Wilks et al., 2019).However, perceptions of unnaturalness associated with cultured meat products are not easy to overcome.Siegrist et al. (2018), for instance, found non-significant differences in terms of naturalness perceptions when comparing messages that described cultured meat in a technical manner-e.g., referring to it as "in-vitro" meat and mentioning a biotechnology production method-with messages that describe it in non-technical terms-e.g., referring to it as "red meat" and mentioning a tissue cultivation method.Similarly, Anderson and Bryant (2018) and C. J. Bryant, Szejda, Parekh, Deshpande, and Tse (2019) compared the effect of three different messages in reducing perceptions of unnaturalness.One message argued that cultured meat was natural by drawing parallels between its production process and that of beer and yogurt.The second message stated that conventional meat was unnatural, citing facts about its production process, such as the use of antibiotics and hormones in animal feed and the use of additives and preservatives.The third message posited that naturalness was not inherently linked to goodness, providing examples of artificial foods that are nutritious and natural entities that can be harmful (e.g., poisonous mushrooms).Notably, results from these studies revealed that none of these messages differ significantly from a control condition in terms of perceptions of unnaturalness towards cultured meat.Neither did they show differences in various behavioral intention measures, such as willingness to try, purchase frequently, or consume cultured meat as a substitute for conventional meat (Anderson & Bryant, 2018;C. J. Bryant, Szejda, et al., 2019).
In this article, we focus on the last message previously mentioned, the one challenging the assumed link between naturalness and goodness.After presenting a description of cultured meat, the message reads (clean = cultured): "You might think that clean meat is unnatural, but naturalness does not necessarily mean goodness.Indeed, most modern food (including rice, tomatoes, milk, and -yes -meat) has been manipulated by people to make it suit our needs, and it is tastier and more nutritious as a result.On the other hand, some plants (like many types of poisonous mushrooms) are completely natural but can easily kill you."We demonstrate that this message is effective among consumers with a growth mindset and, when complemented in a particular way, can also appeal to those with a fixed mindset.
We concentrate on this message for several reasons.Primarily, Scott and Rozin (2020) make a compelling case in favor of the thesis that, despite its positive connotations, "natural" should be considered a neutral concept: there is neither empirical nor theoretical support to suggest that natural entities are "superior with respect to human welfare" (p.989).Given the positive effects of genuine communications on positive consumer outcomes (e.g., consumer satisfaction and loyalty: Ball, Simões Coelho, & Machás, 2004), we consider it important to examine a message that accurately reflects knowledge about naturalness and its relationship to outcomes that consumers deem important (e.g., health).
Our reasons for setting aside the other mentioned messaging strategies are as follows.Claiming that cultured meat is natural might potentially be seen as misleading by some consumers, with concomitant, negative implications (Avery, Cawley, & Eisenberg, 2013).This risk is amplified in the context of cultured meat, as consumers tend to approach communications they know are intended to persuade them with a defensive or skeptical attitude (Darke & Ritchie, 2007), and the novelty of the product may facilitate this tendency.On the other hand, employing communications to the effect that conventional meat is unnatural also faces hurdles.Our main concerns here are the following.Firstly, while comparative communications-i.e., messages that promote a product by comparing it to others-can lead to positive outcomes like improved recall (Sorescu & Gelb, 2000), they can easily escalate into advertising wars, resulting in negative repercussions for all involved parties (in the form, for example, of damaged reputations for the advertisers and exposure to misleading advertisements, for the consumers: Beard, 2010).Perhaps even more importantly, implementing marketing or advertising strategies that employ comparative messages can be difficult due to complex legal frameworks surrounding such communications (Woźna-Burdziak, 2021).Finally, both the "cultured meat is natural" and "conventional meat is unnatural" messages focus on production processes.This could be problematic because research indicates that unnaturalness perceptions are mainly driven by beliefs about the production process, rather than inherent features or properties of the products (Rozin, 2005(Rozin, , 2006)).Framing process thinking, as opposed to end-product thinking, might then be a less-than-optimal strategy, if tackling unnaturalness perceptions is the main goal.

Mindsets as moderators of challenge messages
In our research, we propose that messaging strategies that challenge the significance of naturalness can be effective at increasing acceptance of cultured meat products among consumers with a growth mindset.Despite the fuzziness of the concept (French Ii, 2016), a mindset generally refers to an implicit theory-or belief system that operates mostly outside of conscious awareness-which guides thinking and behavior (Dweck & Leggett, 1988).Many types of mindsets have been documented, including global/parochial (Gupta & Govindarajan, 2002), abundance/scarcity (Huijsmans et al., 2019), deliberative/implemental (Gollwitzer, 2008), prevention/promotion (Higgins, 1998), managerial/entrepreneurial (McGrath & MacMillan, 2000) and, the foci of this work, fixed/growth (Chiu, Dweck, et al., 1997;Dweck & Leggett, 1988).
Fixed and growth mindsets are outlooks about the fixedness or malleability of human traits (Dweck & Leggett, 1988).Individuals with a fixed (or entity) mindset view human traits and abilities as static, unchangeable, or constant, seeing human attributes as mostly immutable, predetermined, or fixed.In contrast, individuals with a growth (or incremental) mindset view human traits and abilities as dynamic, changeable, or elastic, perceiving human attributes as mutable, adaptable, or capable of growth (Chiu, Dweck, et al., 1997;Dweck & Leggett, 1988;Yeager et al., 2014).Fixed and growth mindsets have been examined in a wide range of situations, most prominently in education, organizational, and sports settings (Brady & Alleyne, 2018;Dweck, 2016;Ibarra et al., 2019;Yeager & Dweck, 2020).
In the context of consumer behavior, fixed and growth mindsets have been sparsely employed in understanding consumer responses to such things as brand extensions (Yorkston, Nunes, & Matta, 2010), sustainable luxury products (Quach, Septianto, Thaichon, & Sung, 2023), new technologies (Rahman, Bansal, & Pruthi, 2023;Song, Lee, & Kim, 2019), green clothing (Bakıs ¸ & Kitapçı, 2023), and sustainable food (Rahnama & Popkowski Leszczyc, 2022).The general tendency suggested by these studies is that consumers with a growth mindset are more likely to perform belief adjustments-for instance, they are more likely to embrace brand extensions (Yorkston et al., 2010), accept the apparent contradiction of a product being both luxury and sustainable (Quach et al., 2023), and engage in a broader range of behaviors on social media (Song et al., 2019).This open-mindedness makes them more likely to revise the beliefs that, for instance, (i) a brand cannot perform well perform after launching a product in a new product category, (ii) luxury products are inherently damaging to the environment, or (iii) it is risky to engage in diverse behaviors on social media.
In light of the preceding discussion, we put forward the hypothesis that due to their inherent openness to belief revision, consumers with a growth mindset will be more receptive to the message that naturalness is not equal to goodness and should not serve as a criterion for judging cultured meat.Thus, when presented with a message that challenges the importance of naturalness versus a control message, consumers with a growth mindset should be more accepting of cultured meat than consumers with a fixed mindset.Formally.
H1. Consumers' mindset moderates the effect of message type on willingness to try cultured meat, such that a message challenging the importance of naturalness (vs. a control message) will increase willingness to try cultured meat among consumers with a growth (but not a fixed) mindset.
Against the backdrop of prior findings (Powell, Jones, & Consedine, 2019;Siegrist et al., 2018), we also conjecture that reduced disgust will be the mechanism driving this interactive effect.Pakseresht et al. (2022, p. 13) suggest that in the context of cultured meat, disgust is sensitive to naturalness appraisals and, in their review of the literature, Bryant and Barnett (2020) point out that perceived unnaturalness "was often at the root of disgust" towards cultured meat (p.15).Siegrist et al. (2018) found that perceived naturalness directly influences disgust reactions towards cultured meat and, consistent with this, Powell et al. (2019) propose the use of marketing strategies aimed at reappraising naturalness as a potentially effective approach to increase acceptance.We draw on this body of research to advance the contention that reduced disgust will be the mechanism driving the effect of the message challenging the importance of naturalness on willingness to try cultured meat among consumers with a growth mindset.Importantly, our claim is that the reduction in disgust, brought about by the message challenging the importance of naturalness, will not stem from an increase in naturalness perceptions but rather from a reappraisal of the significance of naturalness itself.Formally.
H2. Disgust will mediate the interactive effect between message type and consumers' mindset, such that a message challenging the importance of cultured meat's naturalness (vs. a control message) will decrease the emotion of disgust associated with cultured meat among consumers with a growth (but not a fixed) mindset, leading to an increased willingness to try cultured meat.
Lastly, we propose that a message challenging the importance of naturalness can be complemented in a way that also makes it effective in increasing willingness to try cultured meat among consumers with a fixed mindset, as we now proceed to explain.
In this article, we focus on a recent product narrative approach germane to the cultured meat setting: insight versus effort narratives (Miceli et al., 2020;Septianto et al., 2022).The insight narrative emphasizes the "illuminating moments in which ideas are generated" (Miceli et al., 2020, p. 603).It relies on concepts such as eureka or aha moments, epiphany, or sudden realization to illustrate the creative process behind a product.In contrast, the effort narrative emphasizes the "hard-work stages in which ideas are developed, executed, and implemented" (Miceli et al., 2020, p. 603).It is based on concepts such as diligence, perseverance, or sustained dedication to depict the creative process.
We argue that employing an effort narrative is an effective way to increase cultured meat acceptance among consumers with a fixed mindset.This thesis is grounded in research suggesting that context moderates the effect of creative narratives on persuasion outcomes.Concretely, consumers hold lay beliefs to the effect that insight is more conducive to the creation of artistic products, whereas effort is more suited to the creation of scientific products.Such beliefs make insight narratives more effective in promoting artistic products and effort narratives more effective in promoting scientific products (Miceli et al., 2020).Because cultured meat is a paradigmatic example of a scientific product, we hypothesize that an effort narrative can enhance cultured meat acceptance among fixed mindset consumers who are presented with the message challenging the importance of naturalness.
We anticipate that an effort narrative would not be of much value for growth mindset consumers, as the message challenging naturalness is expected to be effective among them at increasing cultured meat acceptance just in virtue of their mindset-and irrespective of whether an insight or effort narrative is employed.Hence, we expect a three-way interaction between message type (control vs. challenge), mindset (fixed vs. growth), and creative process narrative (insight vs. effort).
We anticipate the underlying mechanism to be, once again, reduced disgust.Then, after highlighting effort, consumers with a fixed mindset should experience less disgust when presented with the message challenging the importance of naturalness-which will, in turn, increase cultured meat acceptance.This means that after highlighting effort, mindset type will not significantly affect cultured meat acceptance, so consumers with a fixed mindset will behave similarly to those with a growth mindset, both responding positively to the message challenging the importance of naturalness.Formally.

H3.
The interactive effect between message type and consumers' mindset on disgust and willingness to try cultured meat (H1 and H2) will be attenuated when the creative process of cultured meat emphasizes effort (but not insight).Specifically, H1 and H2 will emerge when the creative process of cultured meat emphasizes insight.However, when the creative process of cultured meat emphasizes effort, a message challenging the importance of cultured meat's naturalness (vs. a control message) will decrease the emotion of disgust associated with cultured meat, leading to an increased willingness to try cultured meat, regardless of consumers' mindset.
Our conceptual model is illustrated in Fig. 1.

Method
Ethics.This study received ethical approval a university human research ethics committee.Informed consent was obtained from the participants.
Procedure and Materials.Participants were randomly assigned to evaluate either a message challenging the importance of cultured meat's naturalness or a control message (Anderson & Bryant, 2018; C. J. Bryant, Szejda, et al., 2019).The challenge message presents the definition of cultured meat and further argues against the importance of its naturalness, whereas the control message is simply a description of cultured meat (see Appendix).After reading the message, participants indicated their willingness to try cultured meat using three items (Anderson & Bryant, 2018; C. J. Bryant, Szejda, et al., 2019), measured on a 7-point scale (1 = "not at all", 7 = "very much"): "I am willing to buy clean meat when it is available in the supermarket", "I am willing to eat clean meat regularly", and "I am willing to try clean meat when I have the chance" (α = 0.94).
To measure the posited mediator, we asked participants to indicate on a 7-point scale (1 = "not at all", 7 = "very much") how "curious", "disgusted", "amazed", "fearful", "joyful", and "hopeful" they felt about cultured meat (adapted from Siegrist et al., 2018;Stone, FitzGibbon, Millan, & Murayama, 2022), counterbalancing order, as well as measured perceptions of health risk (adapted from Lusk & Coble, 2005): "Consuming this product would make me concerned about the potential long-term health risks to my family, myself and others" and "Consuming this product might create health issues".We consider other types of risk (e.g., social) as irrelevant, based on prior work ( L. Arango et al.Septianto, 2023).All of these factors have been suggested to be associated with how consumers might respond to cultured meat (Pakseresht et al., 2022).
Then, we measured consumers' mindset using the established scale by Levy, Stroessner, and Dweck (1998).This 7-point scale (1 = "strongly disagree", 7 = "strongly agree") consisted of four items focused on the fixed mindset and four items focused on the growth mindset: Fixed -"Everyone is a certain kind of person, and there is not much that they can do to really change that", "The kind of person someone is, is something basic about them, and it can't be changed very much", "People can do things differently, but the important parts of who they are can't really be changed", and "As much as I hate to admit it, you can't teach an old dog new tricks", Growth -"People can change even their most basic qualities", "Everyone, no matter who they are, can significantly change their basic characteristics", "People can substantially change the kind of person they are", and "No matter what kind of person someone is, they can always change very much".We reverse-coded the items measuring the fixed mindset and averaged them with the items measuring the growth mindset (α = 0.93).As such, higher values reflected higher levels of growth mindset.Finally, participants indicated on a 7-point scale their agreement with the item (1 = "strongly disagree", 7 = "strongly agree"): "Clean meat is unnatural".
However and as expected, we found a marginally significant interaction effect between message type and consumers' mindset (B = 0.38, SE = 0.22, t(141) = 1.71, p = .09).Specifically, consumers with a growth mindset (+1SD) reported a higher willingness to try cultured meat when evaluating a message challenging the naturalness of cultured meat, as compared to a control message (B = 0.90, SE = 0.42, t(141) = 2.12, p = .04).However, among consumers with fixed mindset (-1SD), such differences were non-significant (B = − 0.13, SE = 0.43, t(141) = − 0.31, p = .76).Moreover, a Johnson-Neyman analysis showed that moderation was observed for growth mindset (non-standardized) values ≥ 5.29 (26.2% of the sample).See Fig. 2.These findings supported H1.Moderated mediation.A moderated mediation model (PROCESS Model 7) was tested with 5000 bootstrap resamples (Hayes, 2022) to evaluate if reduced disgust was driving the effect of the previous two-way interaction.The model investigated the effect of message type (challenge vs. control), moderated by consumers' mindset, on willingness to try cultured meat.This model also included the emotions we measured (curiosity, disgust, amazement, fear, joy, and hope) and perceived health risk as parallel mediators.As expected, only the index Fig. 2. Interaction (significant: shaded regions) between message type and growth mindset in predicting willingness to try. of moderated mediation for disgust was significant (see Table 1).

Study 2
Study 2 had two objectives.First, we sought to lend further support to our hypotheses by manipulating (instead of measuring) consumers' mindset.Second and more prominently, we also explored a strategy to increase the effectiveness of a challenge message among consumers with a fixed mindset: Highlighting the effort involved in the creative process of cultured meat.

Method
Ethics.This study received ethical approval a university human research ethics committee.Informed consent was obtained from the participants.
Procedure and Materials.Participants were first presented with a widely used manipulation of consumers' mindset (Chiu, Hong, & Dweck, 1997;Yorkston et al., 2010) which consisted of a short paragraph describing research on either the malleability or fixedness of humans' character.After this, participants were asked to evaluate a message about cultured meat.We used similar messages to those of Study 1 to either challenge the importance of cultured meat's naturalness or a control message.However, we also included a description related to the creative process behind cultured meat as resulting from insight or effort.As their name indicates, the insight and effort descriptions present cultured meat as either the result of insight (e.g., eureka moment or inspiration) or effort (e.g., diligent, meticulous work), respectively (adapted from Miceli et al., 2020;Septianto et al., 2022).Finally, participants completed the measures of willingness to try cultured meat (the DV; α = 0.96), disgust, and consumers' mindset (the manipulation check; α = 0.96).
Willingness to Try.To test the three-way interaction between message type, mindset, and creative process.We conducted a three-way ANOVA with message type (control vs. challenge), consumers' mindset (fixed vs. growth), creative process (insight vs. effort), their two-way interactions, and their three-way interactions as independent variables, and willingness to try cultured meat as the dependent variable (see Table 2).As expected, the three-way interaction effect was significant (F(1, 589) = 4.2, p = .04,η p 2 = 0.007).
In contrast and as expected, in the effort condition the interaction between message type and mindset was not significant (F(1, 589) = 0.18, p = .67).Specifically, there was a significant willingness to try difference between the control (M = 4.08, SD = 1.90) and challenge messages (M = 4.68, SD = 1.9) in the growth mindset condition (F(1, 589) = 3.85, p = .05,η p 2 = 0.01).However, there was also a significant willingness to try difference between the control (M = 4.10, SD = 2.01) and challenge messages (M = 4.88, SD = 1.56) in the fixed mindset condition (F(1, 589) = 6.33, p = .012,η p 2 = 0.01).Then, highlighting effort in cultured meat's creative process makes the effect of mindset irrelevant, as the challenge message is, in an effort condition, more effective than the control message in driving willingness to try cultured meat irrespective of consumers' mindset (see Fig. 3).
Disgust.To evaluate the disgust mechanism, we tested a three-way interaction between message type, mindset, and creative process.We conducted a three-way ANOVA with message type (control vs. challenge), consumers' mindset (fixed vs. growth), creative process (insight vs. effort), their two-way interactions, and their three-way interactions as independent variables, and disgust as the dependent variable (see Table 3).As expected, the three-way interaction effect was significant (F (1, 589) = 3.87, p = .05,η p 2 = 0.007).To gain additional insight into the three-way interaction effect, two separate two-way ANOVAs were conducted (message type × mindset) for each creative process condition.In the insight condition, the interaction between message type and mindset was significant (F(1, 589) = 6.28, p = .01).Specifically, there was a significant disgust difference between the control (M = 3.28, SD = 2.04) and challenge messages (M = 2.47, SD = 1.64)only in the growth mindset condition (F(1, 589) = 7.34, p = .006,η p 2 = 0.01).The difference between the control (M = 2.87, SD = 1.82) and challenge messages (M = 3.09, SD = 1.66) was not significant in the fixed mindset condition (F(1, 589) = 0.59, p = .44).
In contrast and as expected, in the effort condition the interaction between message type and mindset was not significant (F(1, 589) = 0.08, p = .77).Specifically, there was a significant difference between the control (M = 3.38, SD = 1.94) and challenge messages (M = 2.75, SD = 1.76) in the growth mindset condition (F(1, 589) = 4.74, p = .03,η p 2 = 0.008).However, there was also a significant difference between the control (M = 3.56, SD = 1.71) and challenge messages (M = 2.81, SD = 1.63) in the fixed mindset condition (F(1, 589) = 6.40, p = .01,η p 2 Fig. 3. Interaction between message type (control vs challenge), mindset (fixed vs growth), and creative process (insight vs effort) in driving willingness to try cultured meat.= 0.01).Then, highlighting effort in cultured meat's creative process makes the effect of mindset irrelevant, as the challenge message is, in an effort condition, more effective than the control message in reducing disgust towards cultured meat irrespective of consumers' mindset (see Fig. 4).
We finally tested PROCESS Model 11 (a moderated-moderated mediation model) with 5000 bootstrap resamples to evaluate if reduced disgust was driving the effect of the previous three-way interaction.In addition to message type, this model included two dichotomous moderators (mindset and creative process) and the continuous measure of disgust as a mediator.The index of moderated-moderated mediation was significant (B = − .74,SE = 0.37, 95% CI: [− 1.48, − 0.02]), indicating that the interactive effect of message type, mindset, and creative process on willingness to try cultured meat is mediated by disgust.As suggested by the indices of conditional moderated mediation, disgust moderated the interactive effect of message x mindset under an insight condition (B = 0.67, SE = 0.26, 95% CI: [0.15, 1.18]) but not under an effort condition (B = − 0.08, SE = 0.26, 95% CI: [0.59, 0.42]).Specifically, under the insight condition, disgust mediated the relationship between message type and willingness to try among consumers with a growth mindset (B = .52,SE = 0.19, 95% CI: [0.14, 0.91]) but not among those with a fixed mindset (B = − 0.14, SE = 0.18, 95% CI: [-0.49, 0.20]).
Under the effort condition, disgust mediated the relationship between message type and willingness to try among both, consumers with a growth mindset (B = .40,SE = 0.19, 95% CI: [0.02, 0.78]) and fixed mindset (B = 0.48, SE = 0.18, 95% CI: [0.13, 0.84]).Then, under an insight condition, the challenge message was only effective in driving reduced disgust (and, in turn, increased willingness to try cultured meat) among consumers with a growth mindset.However, under an effort condition, the challenge message was effective in driving reduced disgust (and, in turn, increased willingness to try cultured meat) among both, consumers with a growth or fixed mindset.H3 is then fully supported.

Discussion
Perceptions of unnaturalness are a critical barrier to the acceptance of cultured meat (Bryant & Barnett, 2020).Prior studies have found that messages challenging the importance of naturalness are ineffective at increasing willingness to try cultured meat (Anderson & Bryant, 2018;C. J. Bryant, Szejda, et al., 2019).In contrast, our research indicates that these messages can indeed increase willingness to try cultured meat products among consumers with a growth mindset.Moreover, we have demonstrated that coupling these messages with an effort narrative can render them effective among consumers with a fixed mindset too.Consistent with prior findings (Siegrist et al., 2018), we also found that reduced disgust was the mechanism driving the increase in willingness to try cultured meat.

Theoretical implications
Understanding the importance of perceptions of unnaturalness in cultured meat acceptance, a growing body of scholarly work has centered around the question of how to communicate to consumers about cultured meat and naturalness.Communication or messaging strategies that frame the production process behind cultured meat in less technical terms (Siegrist et al., 2018), and others that argue in favor of the naturalness of the product (Anderson & Bryant, 2018;C. J. Bryant, Szejda, et al., 2019) have been explored.Our findings yield several theoretical implications.First, the effectiveness of such messaging strategies has been limited (Pakseresht et al., 2022), with some studies even advising against the use of techniques like these, which mainly target analytic (in contrast to affective) processing (Wilks et al., 2021).Part of the problem, we contend, lies in the heavy focus on the messages themselves (e.g., how to tweak them to make them more effective), somewhat overlooking the recipients of such messages.While personal factors have been studied as determinants of cultured meat acceptance, research has, for the most part, explored demographic variables (Bryant & Barnett, 2020;Pakseresht et al., 2022).The discussion of mindsets in this article serves as a reminder of the crucial role that psychological states play in determining the effectiveness of communications regarding cultured meat.
Second, we have shown the potential pitfalls of fighting the "cultured meat is natural" battle.Attempting to increase the perceptions of naturalness associated with cultured meat has thus far proven ineffective (Anderson & Bryant, 2018;C. J. Bryant, Szejda, et al., 2019;Siegrist et al., 2018), a result we replicate in our study.Rather, we believe that strategies primarily aimed at circumventing the relevance of those perceptions are better.Research suggests that implicit theories of naturalness accentuate process over content (Rozin, 2005(Rozin, , 2006)), and then that people rely more heavily on information about what sort of process a product has gone through-not its inherent properties-when judging its naturalness.As long as its process involves a significant amount of human intervention, no matter how similar the end product is to conventional meat, it is likely that cultured meat will continue to be perceived as unnatural.We propose that, at least in this context, messages that attempt to sever the link between naturalness and goodness could be more effective.
Third, building on recent findings about creative process narratives (Miceli et al., 2020;Septianto et al., 2022), we show how a message challenging the importance of naturalness can be complemented to make it more effective at increasing willingness to try cultured meat (among consumers with a fixed mindset).While narratives frequently feature in the marketing of food products (Nie, Liang, & Chen, 2017), to the extent of our knowledge, not much is known concerning their use in enhancing acceptance of novel food technologies-excluding perhaps entrepreneurial brand narratives that align well with the kind of companies developing these products (Audretsch & Lehmann, 2023;Shapiro, 2018).Here, we have utilized a novel product narrative and proved its value in a novel context.
Fourth, numerous studies have recognized disgust as an important factor in cultured meat acceptance (Egolf, Hartmann, & Siegrist, 2019;Siegrist & Hartmann, 2020;Siegrist et al., 2018;Wim Verbeke et al., 2015).Some studies have established that disgust reactions are linked to naturalness appraisals (Siegrist et al., 2018), which is partly problematic because, as we already pointed out, appraisals of unnaturalness towards cultured meat are resistant to change (Anderson & Bryant, 2018;C. J. Bryant, Szejda, et al., 2019;Siegrist et al., 2018).This insensitivity to information is part of the reason why certain scholars suggest that naturalness perceptions mostly arise from so-called system 1-a fast, intuitive, emotion-driven thinking process-with emotions like disgust driving unnaturalness perceptions (Wilks et al., 2021), instead of the other way around as proposed by some (Bryant & Barnett, 2020;Siegrist et al., 2018).Our findings shed light on this debate.On the one hand, we found that disgust levels varied in response to the message challenging the importance of naturalness.Notably, in our study, this change did not occur as a response to changes in naturalness perceptions, replicating previous findings (Anderson & Bryant, 2018;C. J. Bryant, Szejda, et al., 2019;Siegrist et al., 2018).In contrast, these changes likely emerged from a reappraisal of the importance of naturalness.Then, perceptions of unnaturalness towards cultured meat could indeed stem from system 1 thinking, as argued by Wilks et al. (2021), but not necessarily from affective states such as disgust as they propose; their insensitivity to information, and their fast, intuitive nature might instead derive from other elements, such as consumers' implicit theory of naturalness (Rozin, 2005(Rozin, , 2006)).Disgust, in this model and as our research indicates, would be sensitive to information about naturalness (Anderson & Bryant, 2018;C. J. Bryant, Szejda, et al., 2019;Siegrist et al., 2018), but not to information strategies demanding a reappraisal conflicting with implicit theories of naturalness-such as: cultured meat, a highly processed product, is natural.
L. Arango et al.

Managerial implications
Our research underscores the relevance of considering psychological mindsets (fixed and growth) when developing communication strategies related to cultured meat products.We have shown that information campaigns targeting growth mindset consumers can do well from a strategic perspective.Recognizing that growth mindset data might not be available on a frequent basis, managers can leverage proxies.For instance, in the modern world, the idea of personal development permeates society at different levels, leaving traces in the consumption of books (e.g., Peterson, 2018), apps (e.g., Luminosity), podcasts (e.g., Santos, 2023), among others.Presumably, some of those behavioral traces could prove valuable to target growth mindset consumers.
Secondly, we have additionally advanced the thesis that insight narratives might be problematic, as they are not effective among fixed mindset consumers.Examples of tech products presented through insight narratives are common.Apple's "Behind the Mac" campaign is a clear example of the use of an insight narrative (Apple UK, 2019), and, in general, is common for tech companies to employ those narratives to showcase their products, portraying their creators as individuals with sudden, inspirational, innovative, revolutionary ideas.Insight narratives, or a combination of insight and effort narratives, have also been used in the communication of cultured meat (e.g., Forgacs, 2013;Inside Edition, 2023).Here, we demonstrate that an alternative type of narrative that puts emphasis on the effort involved in the creative process behind cultured meat can be a powerful tool to increase consumer acceptance of this type of product.

Limitations and future research
Some of the limitations of this study are worth considering.First, we have employed a U.S. sample.Attitudes towards cultured meat and conventional meat vary by country (Bryant & Sanctorum, 2021;Jingjing Liu, Chriki, et al., 2023;Mancini & Antonioli, 2019;W. Verbeke et al., 2015), and then some of the effects that we have uncovered might not replicate in other samples.For instance, in cultures where the consumption of conventional meat is deeply rooted in tradition (Hötzel & Vandresen, 2022), growth mindsets might not make a difference in terms of acceptance.Intercultural differences are then the first area that future studies could explore.
We have also employed a measure of intention that might not represent real-world behavior (Webb & Sheeran, 2006).Due to the restricted availability of cultured meat, most studies have resorted to these measures (Bryant & Barnett, 2020;Kouarfaté & Durif, 2023;Pakseresht et al., 2022).Therefore, it is prudent to approach these findings with caution; future studies should attempt a replication in more naturalistic settings once the product is more broadly accessible.Other intention measures, such as willingness to eat (Verbeke, Hung, Baum, & De Steur, 2021), can prove valuable in those studies, as they can provide insight into consumers' long-term readiness to consume cultured meat.
structures.This intuitive, sudden flash of understanding set the stage for a new era in which nutritious, sustainable meat could be produced without traditional livestock farming.b.Effort.The creation of clean meat was the product of painstaking research and exhaustive experimentation by scientists studying cellular structures.This meticulous, step-by-step endeavour set the stage for a new era in which nutritious, sustainable meat could be produced without traditional livestock farming.

Fig. 4 .
Fig. 4. Interaction between message type (control vs challenge), mindset (fixed vs growth), and creative process (insight vs effort) in driving disgust.

Table 1
Moderated mediation models with willingness to try as dependent variable and multiple mediators.Moderated mediation exists if the confidence interval for the estimated index of moderated mediation excludes 0.

Table 2
Three-way ANOVA.DV: Willingness to try cultured meat.