Concordia University research: Vegans develop complex skills to navigate an omnivorous society — what daily life looks like
At vegan festivals, protests and family tables, researchers from concordia university watched how people who reject all animal products negotiate meals, relationships and public spaces. A new paper in the Journal of Consumer Research maps the strains these choices create and the social skills vegans deploy to persist in a largely omnivorous world.
What did Concordia University researchers find about vegan social tensions?
The study, led by Aya Aboelenien and co-authored by Zeynep Arsel, classifies the relational fractures vegans encounter into three broad types: co-performance fractures that arise when shared practices like family meals change; co-learning fractures that occur within the vegan community over definitions and behavior; and marketplace fractures caused by a lack of readily available vegan options in stores and restaurants. “We wanted to look at these fractures from the vegan perspective, since most people are omnivorous and familiar with trying to accommodate others’ dietary needs, ” says Zeynep Arsel, a professor in the Department of Marketing at the John Molson School of Business.
The research drew on fieldwork between 2017 and 2022: interviews, attendance at vegan festivals, protests and sit-ins, and analysis of online materials. That mixed-method approach allowed the team to trace how interpersonal tension can push people away from veganism: “Many of the people I spoke to really wanted to discuss the personal struggles they faced, which in many instances discouraged them from maintaining a vegan lifestyle, ” Aboelenien says. The paper notes that even as plant-based foods gain popularity, most supermarkets and restaurants continue to cater primarily to omnivorous appetites, producing friction in everyday consumption.
How do vegans manage relational fractures in everyday life?
Aboelenien identified four kinds of social skills that people adopt to manage conflict. The study explicitly names decoding — efforts to explain choices and interpret others’ reactions — and continuing learning within community networks as key strategies. It also describes decoupling, where vegans behave in parallel to omnivores and avoid conflict triggers, for example by bringing their own food to gatherings. The fourth skill is noted in the study but not detailed in the available summary.
These strategies operate across social and economic dimensions. Socially, decoding and learning are ways to negotiate identity and reduce friction with family, partners and friends; within the vegan community, co-learning can morph into rigid expectations that deter newcomers. Economically, the marketplace fractures highlight barriers: when stores and restaurants do not offer accessible vegan options, vegans must invest time and money to find or prepare suitable food, adding a material strain to an already socially taxing choice.
What does this research suggest for communities, businesses and researchers?
The paper frames its findings as both descriptive and transferable. Arsel notes the broader applicability of the approach: the same relational dynamics appear in other contexts such as adoption of electric vehicles. By cataloguing fractures and coping skills, the study offers a roadmap for practitioners who want to reduce social friction — from community organizers designing more inclusive onboarding for newcomers to businesses reconsidering how menus and product labels communicate accessibility.
Researchers emphasized the human stakes. The interviews and field observations from 2017–2022 reveal that personal relationships frequently shape whether someone maintains a vegan lifestyle. The study does not prescribe a single remedy; rather, it surfaces concrete tensions and the adaptive behaviors people use to navigate them, pointing to where interventions might matter most.
Back at the gatherings where the study began — the festivals, sit-ins and shared meals Aboelenien attended — the work leaves a clear question in plain view: will the decoding, learning and decoupling strategies researchers observed be enough to ease the interpersonal and marketplace pressures that push some people away? For now, the research documents both the cost of going vegan in an omnivorous society and the complex social skills people develop to keep trying.
