Research Finds Local Social Media News Encourages Adoption of Impossible Meat by Restaurants and Stores

BALTIMORE, Oct. 21, 2026 — New research has found that increased local social media news coverage can encourage independent restaurants and stores to begin offering “impossible meats” — plant-based meat alternatives designed to replicate conventional meat while reducing carbon emissions and offering potential nutritional benefits. The estimated news effect was stronger in counties with a larger share of liberal residents.

“Impossible meats” refers to meat alternatives designed to appeal to meat lovers, including products from Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. A team of researchers wanted to find out whether news disseminated by local publishers on social media (e.g., Facebook) affects restaurants’ and stores’ adoption of these sustainable food products.

In the end, they found out that indeed, the publicity does help. The new research was published in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science, and it finds that local social media news increases the number of local restaurants and stores that put impossible meat products on the menu.

The study is titled, “When Food Gets Political: How Does News Drive Green Food Offerings?,” from Boya Xu of Virginia Tech, Tong Guo of Duke University and Daniel Yi Xu of Duke University and the National Bureau of Economic Research.

“Restaurants and stores are important gatekeepers for new food products,” said Boya Xu. “We wanted to understand what gets these businesses to take the first step. Our findings show that local news shared on social media can encourage them to start offering meat alternatives.”

The researchers studied the early market for plant-based meat alternatives designed to mimic conventional meat while providing environmental and nutritional benefits. They built a location-specific adoption measure from Facebook announcements by stand-alone restaurants and stores between 2015 and 2019. Of 28,915 product-related posts with traceable locations, 13,344 were from stand-alone businesses, including initial announcements and repeated ads. Each business’s first announcement was used to identify adoption. The analysis covered 341 U.S. counties over 20 quarters.

The researchers estimated a positive effect from local coverage. In a county with the sample’s average liberal share of about 30%, one additional locally sourced social media news article about impossible meat in a quarter led to 0.86% more restaurants and stores starting to offer the products that same quarter. In counties where about 50% of residents are liberal, the estimated effect more than doubled to 1.95%.

“What stood out was that publicity did not work the same way in every community,” said Guo. “The increase in new offerings was larger in counties with more liberal residents. The moderating role of local political leanings may reflect ideological differences in how readers engage with, process, and trust news content, potentially driven by ideological alignment and confirmation bias.”

The news effect varied over time and across markets. It was positive on average in the middle stage, from the fourth quarter of 2016 through the first quarter of 2018. In the late stage, from the second quarter of 2018 through 2019, it was stronger in more liberal counties. Early-stage effects were mainly attributable to grassroots sources such as local Facebook communities and guide blogs. Organizational media, including newspapers, public radio and outlets posting on Facebook, played a significant role in later stages.

“For startups with limited marketing budgets, local social media news can be a cost-effective tool for resource-constrained producers in the early launch period,” said Daniel Yi Xu. “But this publicity is not one-size-fits-all. Our findings point to the importance of local political context, publisher type and timing.”

Read the study in full here.

About INFORMS and Marketing Science

INFORMS is the world’s largest association for professionals and students in operations research, AI, analytics, data science and related disciplines, serving as a global authority in advancing cutting-edge practices and fostering an interdisciplinary community of innovation. Marketing Science, a leading journal published by INFORMS, publishes research on quantitative marketing, consumer behavior, pricing and strategy that informs managerial and policy decisions. INFORMS empowers its community to improve organizational performance and drive data-driven decision-making through its journals, conferences and resources. Learn more at www.informs.org or @informs.

# # #