Reducing meat consumption is a highly effective strategy for living sustainably, yet many consumers do not recognize the effectiveness of this strategy. While this may be due in part to a gap in awareness, consumers may be motivated to see changing meat consumption as a relatively ineffective strategy compared to other, more direct strategies. In two studies, participants who were weakly identified as “meat‐eaters” and who were more concerned about the environment were more willing to reduce their meat consumption. However, perceived effectiveness of meat reduction as a mitigation strategy mediated this relationship, suggesting that internal motivations may drive perceptions of effectiveness. Participants in a community sample also reacted negatively to a message about meat's effectiveness, though this reaction was mitigated by environmental concern.

Psychological research on sustainable consumption is developing a rich and diverse corpus of knowledge and tools, involving a broad range of disciplines. This very growth and diversity, however, poses challenges to our collective ability to build upon past research and progress in the field. We aim to place a selection of these challenges in the spotlight for discussion. In particular, we highlight some of the salient difficulties for early career researchers in psychology who are entering this field. Based on issues raised at a workshop conducted as part of the Psychology of Sustainable Consumption Small Group Meeting of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues and the Society of Australasian Social Psychologists in 2018, we first examine challenges associated with working in transdisciplinary teams, measurement quality, data accessibility, and research dissemination. We then propose several options to address these, ranging from actions individual researchers can take, to more systemic changes.

Enhancing prospects for social integration after genocide is important, as past research has shown that greater social integration in local communities can curb future outbreaks of violence (McDoom, 2014) and reduce the severity of posttraumatic stress symptoms associated with past violence (Rieder & Elbert, 2013). Thus, the present research seeks to extend prior work investigating factors that increase willingness for social integration (Kauff et al., 2021; Paolini et al., 2018; Ron et al., 2017) to a post genocide context. Study 1 used self-reported responses from a large community survey (n = 435), and Study 2 used pre and post assessments from a year long structured dialog intervention (n = 81) with survivors, perpetrators, and bystanders of the Rwandan genocide. Across two studies we demonstrate that even after genocide, where divergent collective narratives are common and deeply connected to traumatic experiences, greater openness to communicating with outgroup members about conflict experiences is associated with greater willingness to socially integrate, controlling for age, gender, self-reported positive contact, and empathy. Study 2 found that although survivors tended to enter these programs significantly less open to communicate and less willing to socially integrate compared to perpetrators and bystanders, they grew more open and willing following their participation in dialog-based interventions with genocide perpetrators and bystanders. We discuss the implications of these findings for theory and practice.

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