Carbon labels outperform meat taxes in shifting Chinese diets, study finds

A sweeping survey of urban Chinese consumers has found that the humble soybean curd, not the flashy new generation of plant-based meat, may be the most powerful lever for shifting diets away from animal protein. In a study published in Agricultural and Food Economics, researchers fielded a national online discrete choice experiment with 2,161 urban respondents and then used the resulting preference estimates to simulate two demand-side climate policies: a tax on meat and carbon labeling on food. The simulations showed the plant-based share of choices rising from 8 percent at baseline to 19 percent under a meat tax and 36 percent under carbon labeling, with most of the gains in both scenarios driven by tofu rather than novel plant-based meat.

The research team, led by Yifei Quan with colleagues Jun Li, Ping Qin and Jie-Sheng Tan-Soo, framed each choice task as ordering a meal in a casual dining restaurant, a realistic setting for urban Chinese consumers who frequently eat away from home. Respondents chose among three combo meals that differed only in protein source: animal meat, plant-based meat, or tofu. Side dishes, calories and cooking method were held constant across options, while price, carbon footprint, production origin and organic status varied according to a statistically efficient experimental design. No product images were shown, because the authors wanted to avoid conflating preferences for protein type with reactions to a particular photograph or dish style.

The distinction between the two plant alternatives is central to the study. Plant-based meat refers to foods made from plant-derived ingredients, commonly soy, pea, wheat or rice proteins, processed through methods such as extrusion, high-moisture processing or 3D printing to resemble animal meat. Tofu, by contrast, is a coagulated soy product that originated in China roughly 2,000 years ago, made by grinding, boiling, coagulating and pressing soybeans. Both carry far lighter carbon footprints than meat: life-cycle assessments cited in the paper place plant-based meat at roughly 2 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilogram of product and tofu at around 1 kilogram, compared with about 25 kilograms for beef and 6 kilograms for pork.

The price gap between the two plant options is enormous. The authors’ market survey in China found plant-based meat priced at approximately 117 yuan per kilogram, against roughly 3 yuan per kilogram for tofu, a difference reflecting the extensive processing and specialized additives behind meat analogues. This cost differential turned out to matter enormously in the simulations. Although consumers on average liked plant-based meat more than tofu in purely intrinsic terms, switching to plant-based meat produced a larger simulated welfare loss than switching to tofu, because the steep price of meat analogues more than offset their stronger inherent appeal.

The core preference results come from a mixed logit model estimated on the choice data. After controlling for price, carbon footprint, organic status and production origin, respondents preferred animal protein most, followed by plant-based meat and then tofu. Consumers were more likely to choose proteins with lower prices, lower carbon emissions and organic status, while showing no statistically significant preference for domestic over imported products. Translated into money, the average respondent would need to be compensated about 44.6 yuan to replace an animal-based meal with a tofu-based one, and about 23.9 yuan to replace it with a plant-based meat meal. The authors note that these negative values imply advocacy for sustainable diets alone, without material incentives or information interventions, is unlikely to change behavior substantially.

Beneath those averages lies striking heterogeneity. A latent class analysis identified four consumer segments: meat lovers, making up 31.5 percent of the sample, who strongly preferred meat and disliked both plant options; vegetarians, at 29.5 percent, who preferred both tofu and plant-based meat; plant-based meat adopters, at 35 percent, who strongly favored the novel analogue while ranking tofu lowest; and a small group of indifferent consumers, 4.1 percent, who showed no statistically significant attribute coefficients, a pattern the authors interpret as simplified decision heuristics rather than weak meat preferences. The segments also differed demographically: meat lovers were the youngest, most likely to be single and had the lowest incomes, while vegetarians and plant-based meat adopters were older, more often married and wealthier.

Food-choice motives diverged sharply across the segments in ways that matter for policy design. Price was important to 52 percent of meat lovers but only 20 and 23 percent of vegetarians and plant-based meat adopters respectively. Environmental concern was cited by 26 percent of both plant-oriented classes, compared with just 5 percent of meat lovers and 8 percent of indifferent consumers. Animal welfare was rarely cited in any class, consistent with earlier survey evidence that fewer than 5 percent of Chinese consumers name it as a primary food-purchase criterion, a notably weaker motive than in many Western markets. Nutrition and freshness mattered across all groups.

The policy simulations translated these preferences into market shares and welfare changes using Monte Carlo methods. In the baseline scenario with current market prices, shifting away from animal protein was welfare-reducing for the average consumer, with simulated losses of 35.4 yuan for switching to tofu and 59.9 yuan for switching to plant-based meat, and only 8 percent of simulated choices went to plant proteins. Under a meat tax calibrated to rates from the international literature on optimal meat pricing, welfare losses declined modestly, to 24.7 yuan for tofu and 51.9 yuan for plant-based meat, and the plant-based market share rose to 19 percent. Carbon labeling produced larger effects: the welfare loss from switching to tofu fell to 10.3 yuan and the loss for plant-based meat to 40.9 yuan, while the simulated plant-based share climbed to 36 percent, again mainly through increased tofu consumption.

The authors attribute carbon labeling’s stronger simulated performance to consumers’ willingness to pay for emission reductions, the salience of the carbon information in the experiment, and the availability of cheap tofu, which lets the label highlight low emissions while preserving a price advantage. A simple price comparison suggests plant-based meat would need to fall by at least 45 percent, from about 44.8 yuan to 24.7 yuan per meal, to reach tofu’s simulated market share, a reduction the authors say would likely require technological improvement, scale economies or targeted subsidies. They also stress that the labeling result should be read as an upper bound on short-run substitution, since a stated single-meal choice with unusually explicit carbon information does not necessarily translate into sustained dietary change; repeated exposure, product availability, supportive food environments and habit formation would all be needed for longer-term shifts.

The study carries important caveats about who was surveyed and what was measured. The online sample, collected between May and October 2023, is younger, more educated and higher-income than the national population, with an average age of 30.7 years, predominantly university-educated respondents and average monthly household income of about 16,400 yuan, and the authors caution against extrapolating to all of China. Respondents also overrepresented people familiar with plant-based meat, with 83.4 percent having purchased it, although re-estimating the models on experienced purchasers alone yielded similar results. Validity checks found little evidence of attribute non-attendance or of respondents conflating protein type with carbon information. The experiment captured stated choices for a single restaurant meal, not long-term dietary replacement. Within those limits, the authors conclude that culturally familiar and affordable traditional plant proteins deserve a larger place in sustainability policy, and that information-based instruments such as carbon labeling, which preserve consumer choice and align with emerging Chinese labeling pilots, may be more feasible than meat taxes, which remain a counterfactual benchmark rather than an implemented policy in China.

Subject of Research: Consumer preferences for traditional versus novel plant-based proteins and simulated climate policy effects in China

Article Title: Traditional or novel plant-based proteins? Consumer preferences and climate policy simulations in China

Article References: Quan, Y., Li, J., Qin, P., & Tan-Soo, J.-S. (2026). Traditional or novel plant-based proteins? Consumer preferences and climate policy simulations in China. Agricultural and Food Economics, 14(1), Article 76. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40100-026-00520-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40100-026-00520-8

Keywords: plant-based protein, tofu, plant-based meat, carbon labeling, meat tax, discrete choice experiment, China, consumer preferences, dietary shift, food emissions, latent class analysis, climate policy