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• Vegetarian documentary on Chinese social media sparked resistance despite a solid cultural foundation. • Ethical vegetarianism of the documentary conflicts with Chinese views of a balanced diet. • Vegetarian messages must align with local cultural norms. • Celebrity advocacy can appear elitist and ineffective. • Flexitarian approaches may better resonate for vegetarian promotion. The shift to a vegetarian diet has multiple benefits, including the promotion of public health, sustainability, and animal welfare. Despite these advantages, vegetarian food choices often provoke controversy, particularly on social media platforms. On International Vegetarian Day 2021, renowned Chinese actress Zhang Jingchu endorsed a documentary titled "Vegetarian" on Weibo, igniting widespread discussion among Chinese netizens. Considering China's deep cultural and practical roots in vegetarianism, the predominantly negative response to the documentary was surprising. This study employs frame analysis to dissect the portrayal of vegetarianism in the documentary, utilizing topic modeling based on Latent Dirichlet Allocation and sentiment analysis to examine over 26,000 related comments. Our findings indicate that the documentary predominantly utilizes health and ethical frames to represent vegetarianism, with a greater emphasis on ethical considerations. Topic modeling of the comments uncovered 14 topics that reflect netizens' dissatisfaction with various facets of the vegetarian advocacy presented in the documentary. Moreover, the comments reveal three primary strategies netizens use to justify meat consumption and alleviate cognitive dissonance: rationalization of meat eating, skepticism towards vegetarianism, and resistance to the advocacy message of "Vegetarian". The results imply that for vegetarian advocacy to be more effective, it should align with local everyday concerns, food culture, and the current stage of social development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Meat substitute experience strongly predicts meat reduction intentions in China and US. • Meat substitute experience strongly predicts meat reduction policy support in China and US. • Factual information can increase meat reduction intentions and respective policy support. • Meat substitute experience can potentially boost the positive effect of information. • Strategic policy sequencing can increase support and create positive political feedback. The food system causes more than a third of the global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, of which half are from livestock. Shifting towards plant-based diets could significantly reduce deforestation, protect biodiversity, and contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and Paris climate targets. Arguably, large-scale shifts in meat consumption require ambitious policy change. Yet, deep-rooted eating habits, pleasure, cultural status, and personal freedom are just a few of many obstacles to adopt ambitious demand-side policies and reduce meat consumption. Here, we hypothesize that technological innovation in meat substitutes, if effectively combined with social norm and factual informational triggers for behavioral changes, can foster positive political feedback to transform the food system. To test our hypothesis, we conducted survey experiments with citizens (N = 2590) in China and the US – the globally largest meat markets – and analyzed data using different machine learning methods. Our findings show that personal experience with novel plant-based meat substitutes strongly predicts individuals' intentions to reduce their meat consumption, eat more substitutes, and support public policies to catalyze a transition to more plant-based diets. We also find that in both countries factual and social norm information about the benefits of more plant-based diets can increase citizens' behavioral change intentions and support for meat reduction policies. Overall, however, social norm information had no significant additional effects on the outcomes compared to the simple factual information treatments. In the US, prior experience with innovative meat substitutes potentially can boost the positive effects of informational campaigns on public support for meat reduction policies. The results offer promising implications for a policy sequencing strategy to create positive political feedback and enable socio-technical tipping dynamics for sustainable food system transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]