A Tough Nudge to Crack: An Experimental Study on Behavioral Cues to Reduce Animal-Based Food Consumption

Abstract

The regional and global proportions of foods that are derived from animal versus plant sources have important implications for the economy, climate change, human health, and animal welfare. Thus, it is important to understand attitudes toward the consumption of animal products, and what might affect their evolution. In three experiments, we explored interventions rooted in the nudge and moral foundations literatures and tested for changes in participants’ beliefs and actions around the consumption of animal products. Our results showed limited success for the interventions to significantly affect beliefs, despite the wide variety of treatment conditions. Messaging that appealed to moral values had a larger impact for some interventions, hinting at the relatively important role of morality in influencing people’s willingness to reduce their consumption of animal products. Overall, however, our evidence suggests that attitudes toward meat consumption may be more strongly ingrained than other attitudes and behaviors to which nudges are often successfully applied.