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

The Food Service Playbook for Promoting Sustainable Food Choices

“…The field would also benefit from a move away from studies exploring belief-and norms-based interventions (Greene et al 2023). Our own promise ratio analysis supports these conclusions.…”

“…▪ Other effect sizes reported in the academic review literature include the following: Chang et al (2023) found an 82 percent average reduction in the odds of consuming meat in higher education dining settings in a meta-analysis of 31 behavior change intervention studies. Greene et al (2023) found that improving the convenience of choosing plant-rich dishes (by introducing default plant-rich dishes or making these the recommended choice) was associated with the largest effect size of all intervention types reviewed (Cohen's d = 1.64). Mathur et al (2021) found that interventions aimed at reducing meat intake by showing diners images of farm animals were also effective and led to a significant 22 percent increase in the likelihood of participants choosing to reduce their consumption, purchasing, or intentions to eat meat (meta-analytic mean risk ratio [RR] = 1.22; 95 percent CI: [1.13, 1.33]).…”

“…Behavior is likely to differ in test circumstances compared to in real life, implying the effect sizes drawn from these studies may not accurately depict true estimated impact. This has been shown for trials exploring environmental footprint labels specifically, which are generally found effective in survey-style studies but demonstrate far less promise when trialed in real-life food retail and dining contexts (Greene et al 2023).…”