From Feed to Feast: Unveiling the Influence of Social Media on Plant-based Consumption

Consumer acceptance towards plant-based ingredients and alternative proteins is a crucial driver for societal preferences and sustainable food consumption which has potential to impact market growth. This study aims to analyze citizen-consumer associations, societal acceptance, and sentiments towards plant-based ingredients using social media influencers’ (SMIs) data. This study will also evaluate how SMIs affect consumer engagement and socio-cultural factors associated with plant-based ingredients through their social media content. This study will obtain publicly available datasets from ten selected micro SMIs (followers 10k to 100k) and macro-SMIs (followers 100k to 1 million) and consumer data to their posts from Instagram Graph API from 31 December 2023 to 31 December 2024 from Denmark, Spain, United Kingdom (UK) and Italy. Major criteria include those influencers who promote plant-based ingredients through cooking recipes and lifestyle content. The sentimental analysis is conducted using a Lexicon-based approach and Python for coding and analyses. This explores consumer attitude towards plant-based ingredients and sustainable food consumption, assessing market potential in selected countries, focusing on SMIs impact on buying decisions. The research underscores the significant growth of digital ecosystems and provides strong insights on promoting more eco-conscious consumption patterns and advancement in sustainable food transitions through SMIs engagement globally.