Why this survey was designed
Pembient needed direct user data to answer a simple question: would people who consume rhino horn accept a bioengineered version if it were chemically identical, cheaper, and legal? Existing studies on horn demand were mostly qualitative or focused on awareness rather than willingness to substitute.
The survey targeted 480 adults aged 25 and older earning at least 5 million VND per month, across Vietnam's three largest cities. Twenty questions covered past and future purchasing, motivations, prices, sales channels, and attitudes toward substitutes, including water buffalo horn and lab‑made horn.
Self‑reported use rates far higher than earlier studies
37 percent of respondents said they had consumed rhino horn, and 43 percent said they had bought it in whole, piece or powder form. Both numbers are dramatically higher than the 5 percent use rate reported in a 2013 Traffic study, which Pembient explicitly notes in the survey document.
The difference could reflect sample bias (Pembient targeted wealthier, urban consumers), question wording, or respondent honesty. But the gap is so large it suggests earlier figures may have undercounted actual use, especially among people with disposable income.
"In a previous study, only 5% of the people surveyed admitted to buying or consuming rhino horn."
What drives consumption
When asked why they might consume horn, respondents listed:
- Improve sex life: 25 percent
- Fight cancer: 17 percent
- Prescribed by parent or professional: 17 percent
- Reduce fever: 7 percent
- Prevent hangover: 9 percent
- Show social status: 8 percent
Sexual enhancement tops the list, followed closely by cancer treatment and family or professional prescription. Status signaling ranks lower, though other research suggests it understates its role.
The top reasons people would not consume horn were high prices (22 percent), concerns about counterfeits (20 percent), environmental concerns (19 percent), and legal penalties (18 percent). Price and authenticity worries outweigh conservation ethics in these responses.
Openness to substitutes
The key finding for Pembient's model: 41 percent of respondents said they would accept using rhino horn made in a lab. That is higher than the 15 percent who would accept water buffalo horn as a substitute, suggesting that synthetic horn labeled as "rhino horn" holds appeal beyond simply being a keratin‑based traditional remedy.
59 percent said no to synthetic horn, indicating that substitution would not work for the majority of the sample. But Pembient's argument was always that capturing even a substantial minority of demand with a legal, scalable product would reduce poaching pressure.
Two‑fifths openness to lab‑made horn became the empirical anchor for the entire Pembient pitch: there is a substitutable segment of the market, and it is big enough to matter.
Price and dosage data
Respondents reported a median horn dose of 3 grams and a median cost of 1 million VND per dose (roughly $50 USD at 2014 rates, though the literature Pembient cites suggests $195 for 3 grams). The wide variance in reported prices hints at market segmentation, counterfeit circulation, and buyer confusion about value.
When the survey calculated implied per‑kilogram prices from dose and cost data, the median was around $19,000 per kilogram, but the range was enormous, from near‑zero to over $23 million, reflecting either data entry errors or respondents conflating different products.
Where horn is sold
Online forums (26 percent), search engines (24 percent), and social networks (16 percent) dominated as places respondents had seen horn for sale. Traditional pharmacies and wholesalers trailed at 5 percent and 4 percent. This pointed to a digitally mediated, peer‑referral market rather than a brick‑and‑mortar retail system, which has implications for how substitutes would need to be distributed.
What this survey did for Pembient
This data let Pembient argue to investors, conservation groups, and regulators that:
- Demand for horn is higher than official estimates suggest.
- A significant minority of users care more about chemical composition than provenance and would accept synthetic alternatives.
- Price and counterfeit fears create an opening for a branded, verified lab product.
It also gave them dosage and pricing benchmarks to model production costs and revenue scenarios. The survey is the closest thing Pembient had to proof‑of‑concept for substitution as a conservation strategy, and it has been cited in almost every pitch, article, and panel discussion they have done since 2014.
