Motivating Sustainable Food Choices

Abstract

Small, everyday changes in people’s behavior can have significant positive environmental impacts. To this end, the research reported here focused on the role of an asymmetric intervention (a “nudge”) in motivating choices with positive environmental outcomes. The context of this research was motivating proenvironmental food choice in campus dining halls. An experiment was conducted in which a default menu, presenting only appealing or unappealing meat-free meal options, was compared with more conventional menu configurations. The use of a default menu increased the probability that study participants would choose a meat-free meal option, and this probability increased when appealing default meal options were provided. Neither the provision of information on the menus nor the proenvironmental value orientation and worldview of participants contributed to the logistic model. These results suggest that default-based interventions can be important tools in motivating proenvironmental behavior and can serve to complement information and education efforts over the long term.