Perceived Behavioural Control and Animal-Welfare Ethics Predict Cultured-Meat Acceptance in INDIA: An Extended Theory of Planned Behaviour Analysis

Cultured meat is proposed as a sustainable protein alternative, yet consumer acceptance remains one of the principal barriers to its commercialisation, and the evidence base remains overwhelmingly Western. India—the world’s most populous nation, characterised by dietary pluralism and the principle of ahimsa—remains understudied. Using a cross-sectional online survey, this study applied an extended Theory of Planned Behaviour to identify psychological predictors of the intention to try cultured meat among English-speaking Indian consumers (N = 255), employing latent-variable structural equation modelling with a robustness check for common-method variance. Perceived behavioural control was the strongest predictor of intention (β = 0.609, p < 0.001), followed by attitude (β = 0.295) and subjective norms (β = 0.263, sensitive to method variance); however, dominance decomposition attributed the largest share of explained variance to subjective norms. Ethical concern for animal welfare was the strongest predictor of attitude (β = 0.487), while disgust was a significant negative predictor (β = −0.272); perceived unnaturalness, health concern, and dietary-group differences were non-significant. The model explained 69.9% of the variance in intention. Acceptance reflected perceived feasibility and ethical concern for animal welfare rather than perceived unnaturalness, diverging from Western evidence and carrying implications for marketing and certification strategies.