Reducing meat consumption: Insights from a bibliometric analysis and future scopes

Several studies have indicated that a global reduction in meat consumption is inevitable for sustainability and public health, despite the challenges inherent to changing eating habits. The purpose of this article is to pursue a stock-take of consumer behavior with regard to reducing meat consumption through a literature review using bibliometric analysis. The findings show the multidisciplinary nature of the field, which is in full development and with many knowledge gaps. Publications are concentrated in a few dominant journals and originated exclusively in developed countries. Six thematic subareas are central to the theme in question and helped to structure the field. The findings also show that few authors have been recurrent in publications on the subject and that three thematic groups represent promising areas for future research: behavior, sustainability, and interventions. The contributions of this article lie in the fact that helps organizations and researchers achieve a panoramic view of the field, identifying unanswered questions and possible partners for research. From a practical perspective, this research can also support new studies to develop public policies aimed at reducing (or replacing) meat consumption or encouraging enterprises and investments related to alternative products for conventional meat.