Selfishly Eating Up the Planet? The influence of selfishness, empathy, motivation, religion, and gender on the consumption of meat and willingness to reduce animal product consumption

PhD by Publication


Dillon-Murray, Angela. 2024. Selfishly Eating Up the Planet? The influence of selfishness, empathy, motivation, religion, and gender on the consumption of meat and willingness to reduce animal product consumption. PhD by Publication Doctor of Philosophy. University of Southern Queensland. https://doi.org/10.26192/z9610
Title

Selfishly Eating Up the Planet? The influence of selfishness, empathy, motivation, religion, and gender on the consumption of meat and willingness to reduce animal product consumption

TypePhD by Publication
AuthorsDillon-Murray, Angela
Supervisor
1. FirstProf Jeffrey Soar
2. SecondDr Aletha Ward
Institution of OriginUniversity of Southern Queensland
Qualification NameDoctor of Philosophy
Number of Pages196
Year2024
PublisherUniversity of Southern Queensland
Place of PublicationAustralia
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.26192/z9610
Abstract

As the human behaviour of eating animal products is linked to several global issues spanning the environment, health, and the suffering of trillions of animals, understanding the psychology of animal product consumption and reduction may contribute to solving them. Psychological selfishness has not been explored in this area and was combined in this research with indicators of animal-oriented empathy, motivations, willingness, religion, and gender to determine what role they played in meat consumption and animal product reduction via a quantitative and cross-sectional research design. As this thesis is by publication, three articles describe the research carried out. An Australian sample, N = 497 for the first and third studies and N = 492 in the second were surveyed via Zoho Survey online. Article one reported that higher empathy and lower selfishness were accompanied by lower meat consumption for males but not females, suggesting other factors may influence meat consumption for females. Animal, environmental, and health motivations were positively associated with the psychological factors for males, implying that all motivations are convincing to males. Females’ health and animal motivations were positively associated with empathy, and selfishness with environmental motivation. In article two, environmental motivation was the most significant influence of the three motivations on willingness to reduce animal product consumption. The next was animal motivation. In contrast, health motivation had a negative association with willingness; the belief that meat is healthy may be working against willingness. One psychological factor, pathological selfishness, predicted willingness. Article three revealed higher meat consumption groups reported higher selfishness. This was superseded by the interaction effect, where religious groups with higher meat consumption had higher pathological selfishness than non-religious high consumers. This thesis met its aim by adding a novel contribution to understanding the psychological and sociodemographic factors related to animal product consumption and reduction.

Keywordsmeat consumption; religion; Animal-oriented empathy; selfishness; motivation; gender; willingness to reduce
Related Output
Has partThe Association Between Selfishness, Animal-Oriented Empathy, Three Meat Reduction Motivations (Animal, Health, and Environment), Gender, and Meat Consumption
Has partWillingness to reduce animal product consumption: Exploring the role of environmental, animal, and health motivations, selfishness, and animal-oriented empathy
Contains Sensitive ContentDoes not contain sensitive content
ANZSRC Field of Research 2020520503. Personality and individual differences
Public Notes

File reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher/author/creator.

Byline AffiliationsSchool of Business
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Related outputs

Willingness to reduce animal product consumption: Exploring the role of environmental, animal, and health motivations, selfishness, and animal-oriented empathy
Dillon-Murray, Angela, Ward, Aletha and Soar, Jeffrey. 2024. "Willingness to reduce animal product consumption: Exploring the role of environmental, animal, and health motivations, selfishness, and animal-oriented empathy." Food Ethics. 9 (2). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41055-024-00154-w