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Background: Reducing meat consumption may improve human health, curb environmental damage and greenhouse gas emissions, and limit the large-scale suffering of animals raised in factory farms. Previous work has begun to develop interventions to reduce individual meat consumption, often by appealing directly to individual health motivations. However, research on nutritional behavior change suggests that interventions additionally linking behavior to ethical values, identity formation, and existing social movements may be particularly effective and longer-lasting. Regarding meat consumption, preliminary evidence and psychological theory suggest that appeals related to animal welfare may have considerable potential to effectively leverage these elements of human psychology. We aim to conduct a systematic review and quantitative meta-analysis evaluating the effectiveness of animal welfare-related appeals on actual or intended meat consumption or purchasing. Our investigation will critically synthesize the current state of knowledge regarding psychological mechanisms of intervening on individual meat consumption and empirically identify the psychological characteristics underlying the most effective animal welfare-based interventions. Methods: We will systematically search eight academic databases and extensively search unpublished grey literature. We will include studies that assess interventions intended to reduce meat consumption or purchase through the mention or portrayal of animal welfare, that measure outcomes related to meat consumption or purchase, and that have a control condition. Eligible studies may recruit from any human population, be written in any language, and be published or released any time. We will meta-analyze the studies, reporting the pooled point estimate and additional metrics that describe the distribution of potentially heterogeneous effects. We will assess studies' risk of bias and conduct sensitivity analyses for publication bias. We describe possible follow-up analyses to investigate hypothesized moderators of intervention effectiveness. Discussion: The findings of the proposed systematic review and meta-analysis, including any identified methodological limitations of the existing literature, could inform the design of successful evidence-based interventions with broad potential to improve human, animal, and environmental well-being.

Background There is evidence suggesting that active participation of patients in their health care can improve the quality of care and decrease health-care costs. Further, patient reports of their healthcare experience are increasingly used to monitor health-care quality.

Reducing meat consumption may improve human health, curb environmental damage, and limit the large-scale suffering of animals reared in factory farms. Most attention to reducing consumption has focused on restructuring environments where foods are chosen or making health or environmental appeals. However, psychological theory suggests that interventions appealing to animal welfare might operate on distinct, potent pathways. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis evaluating the effectiveness of these interventions. We searched eight academic databases and extensively searched grey literature. We meta-analyzed 100 studies assessing interventions designed to reduce meat consumption or purchase by mentioning or portraying farm animals, that measured behavioral or self-reported outcomes related to meat consumption, purchase, or related intentions, and that had a control condition. The interventions consistently reduced meat consumption, purchase, or related intentions at least in the short term with meaningfully large effects (meta-analytic average risk ratio [RR] = 1.22; 95% CI: [1.13, 1.33]). We estimated that a large majority of true population effects (71%; [95% CI: 58%, 80%]) were stronger than RR=1.1 and that few were in the unintended direction. Via meta-regression, we identified some study and intervention characteristics that were associated with effect size. Risk-of-bias assessments identified both methodological strengths and limitations of this literature; however, results did not differ meaningfully in sensitivity analyses retaining only studies at the lowest risk of bias. Evidence of publication bias was not apparent. In conclusion, animal welfare interventions preliminarily appear effective in these typically short-term studies of primarily self-reported outcomes. Future research should use direct behavioral outcomes that minimize the potential for social desirability bias and are measured over long-term follow-up.