How to entice restaurant patrons to order low-emissions meals? A meta-analysis and research agenda

Abstract

Climate change mitigation is now a matter of urgency. Substantial mitigation effects can be achieved by changing consumer behavior, including food choice. Food systems generate 34% of global greenhouse emissions. Researchers can contribute to climate change mitigation by developing theory-informed interventions that entice consumers to choose low-emissions foods. This meta-analysis synthesizes past research, which developed interventions to influence food choices in restaurants and tested them experimentally. We meta-analyzed 83 interventions that aimed to entice people to choose low emissions meals. Results indicate that the primary focus of interventions developed to date is to change beliefs to alter food choices. Our meta-analysis reveals that such belief-based interventions have only a small effect particularly on food choice behavior (compared to intentions). Some alternative behavior change approaches prove to be more effective, including increasing the enjoyment associated with choosing the target meal, increasing its availability, and making it more convenient to choose. Our meta-analysis highlights that more field studies are needed. Only 25 out of 83 interventions took place in the field, with the remainder taking place in simulated restaurants (i.e., survey studies). Future research should focus on intervention mechanisms that have proven successful in the simulated restaurant context as well as on novel theoretical approaches that remain entirely unexplored, including targeting habits by either activating or deliberately disrupting them.