Can information influence meat consumption behaviour? An experimental field study in the university canteen

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2021.104498Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The study combines an online survey with a field study in a university canteen.

  • Aim of the study is to investigate the role of information on meat consumption.

  • Health information has no main effect on attitude, intention, or behaviour.

  • Environmental information has no main effect on attitude, intention, or behaviour.

  • Subjective knowledge moderates the effect of environmental information on attitude.

Abstract

The present study investigates the effectiveness of health and environmental information provision as an intervention to reduce meat consumption behaviour. In an experimental online survey (n = 194), we tested how information about the negative effects of meat consumption on health or the environment influence attitude and intention to reduce meat consumption. In the following two weeks, we measured participants’ meat consumption behaviour in the university canteen, which we accessed through an individual purchase card. Contrary to our hypotheses, our results show that there is no direct effect of health or environmental information on attitude, intention, or meat consumption behaviour compared to the control group. However, our results indicate that for participants with low subjective knowledge, environmental information is effective in influencing attitude. Neither attitude nor intention mediates the relationship between information and behaviour. Our findings highlight that information provision has limited effectiveness in changing attitude, but does not influence intention or behaviour. We conclude that more research is needed that includes a direct measure of meat consumption behaviour to evaluate the effectiveness of information provision as an intervention.

Introduction

High rates of meat consumption are associated with negative consequences for environmental sustainability, such as climate change (Tilman & Clark, 2014), and for human health, such as increased risks for cardiovascular diseases (Bronzato & Durante, 2017). In contrast, meat-reduced and vegetarian diets are beneficial for environmental sustainability and human health (Dinu et al., 2017, Macdiarmid et al., 2012). Nevertheless, many consumers continue to associate meat with rather positive outcomes (Michel et al., 2021, Neff et al., 2018) and lack knowledge about the detrimental impacts of meat consumption (Macdiarmid et al., 2016, Stubbs et al., 2018). Therefore, it is necessary to develop effective communication strategies in order to reduce current levels of meat consumption and contribute towards achieving the UN Sustainability Development Goals (United Nations, 2015).

Many studies have already investigated the effect of health and environmental information on meat consumption predictors, such as attitude, intention, or self-reported behaviour (e.g. Cordts et al., 2014, Wolstenholme et al., 2020), but research that includes a measurement of observable meat consumption behaviour is scarce (Harguess, Crespo, & Hong, 2020). In the present study, we investigate the effect of health and environmental information on reducing meat consumption behaviour. Contrary to the majority of previous research, we investigate the effect of information on attitude and intention, measured with an experimental survey, and combine it with a follow-up behavioural measure of individual meat consumption in the university canteen.

Providing information can influence behaviour via two possible routes, the first focusing on the influence of information on attitude, thus an indirect influence of information on behaviour. The second refers to increasing knowledge, which can have a direct impact on behaviour.

The effect of persuasive communication on changing attitudes is well-established in the literature (Briñol et al., 2009, Eagly and Chaiken, 1993, Hovland et al., 1953, Petty et al., 1997, Petty and Cacioppo, 1986). Attitudes are often the target of information-based behaviour change approaches, because the attitude has a high prediction accuracy for the occurrence of the behaviour (Glasman and Albarracín, 2006, McEachan et al., 2011). For example, several studies have demonstrated that participants’ attitude towards meat consumption can predict their levels of meat consumption (e.g. Lentz et al., 2018, McCarthy et al., 2004). Hence, providing information (i.e. persuasive communication) about the negative consequences of meat consumption leads to a less favourable evaluation of meat consumption, which results in reduced meat consumption (Carfora, Catellani, Caso, & Conner, 2019). Other theories such as the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) further specified the attitude-behaviour relationship by demonstrating how behavioural intentions mediate the effects of attitude on behaviour (Ajzen, 1991, McEachan et al., 2011). Hence, changing the attitude can have a direct impact on behaviour and the effect can be mediated by behavioural intentions.

Furthermore, providing information can have a direct impact on behaviour. According to the knowledge deficit model (KDM), knowledge about the negative consequences of a behaviour directly predicts behavioural frequency. Hence, when people have a lack of knowledge regarding the consequences of their behaviour, this influences how often the behaviour will be executed. Therefore, eliminating this lack of knowledge through information provision should lead to reduced behavioural intentions and behaviour frequency (Schultz, 2002). Several studies indicate that a majority of consumers underestimate the negative impact of meat consumption on environmental sustainability (Lentz et al., 2018, Macdiarmid et al., 2016) and do not perceive changes in meat consumption as a helpful tool to tackle climate change (Lea and Worsley, 2008, Sanchez-Sabate and Sabaté, 2019). Similarly, a meat-containing diet is considered rather healthy and necessary (Neff et al., 2018) and meat is overall positively evaluated (Michel et al., 2021). Hence, providing information about the negative consequences of meat consumption should reduce meat consumption and this effect might be especially prominent among those who are less knowledgeable about the negative consequences of meat consumption.

The overall effect of information provision as an intervention to reduce meat consumption has been described in two systematic reviews (see Bianchi et al., 2018, Harguess et al., 2020). Both reviews conclude that information provision is an effective tool to influence meat consumption, but that the majority of studies primarily focused on attitude, intention, or self-reported behaviour (Bianchi et al., 2018, Harguess et al., 2020). In the following literature review, we describe studies that have focused on investigating the effect of health and environmental information on meat consumption predictors.

The effectiveness of health and environmental information in changing meat-consumption predictors has received mixed support in previous research. Several studies found positive effects of health information provision on attitude (Carfora et al., 2019, Gaspar et al., 2015), intention (Cordts et al., 2014), and self-reported behaviour (Carfora, Bertolotti, & Catellani, 2019), whereas other research found no such evidence (Berndsen and van der Pligt, 2005, Palomo-Vélez et al., 2018). Results on environmental information draw a similar picture, with some studies reporting a positive effect (Stea and Pickering, 2019, Wolstenholme et al., 2020) and other studies demonstrating no effect (Palomo-Vélez et al., 2018, Verain et al., 2017) on meat consumption predictors. One study indicated that health information is more effective than environmental information (Cordts et al., 2014), but this effect could not be observed in other studies (e.g. Vainio et al., 2018, Wolstenholme et al., 2020).

Furthermore, some studies investigated whether the combination of health and environmental information is superior to providing one single type of information. Two studies concluded that combining health and environmental arguments did not significantly improve the information effectiveness compared to a single argument (Vainio et al., 2018, Wolstenholme et al., 2020), whereas another study found that the combination is even less effective than a single argument (Carfora, Catellani, et al., 2019).

Other research has focused on investigating possible mechanisms and circumstances under which information influences meat consumption predictors. A study by Carfora, Catellani, et al. (2019) tested whether the effect of information on self-reported behaviour is mediated by attitude. They found support for a full mediation of attitude, indicating that information has no direct impact on behaviour. Several other studies showed that the effect of information can increase when it is tailored to different consumer segments, for example, based on value-orientations (Graham & Abrahamse, 2017), the importance attached to sustainability (Verain et al., 2017), or prior beliefs about meat consumption (Vainio et al., 2018).

Most literature in the field, including the results of the previously reported studies, only investigates the effect of information on meat consumption predictors. Despite the body of evidence for the predictive power of attitude and intention on behaviour (Glasman and Albarracín, 2006, McEachan et al., 2011), we find also instances of an intention-behaviour gap or attitude-behaviour gap in the literature (e.g. Carrington et al., 2010, Grimmer and Miles, 2017). Self-report measures of meat consumption, such as food frequency questionnaires or 24-hour recalls, can only partly bridge this gap. These measurements are subjective to certain biases, for instance, the social desirability bias (Hebert, Clemow, Pbert, Ockene, & Ockene, 1995) or the recall bias (Freedman et al., 2014), both leading to inaccurate reports of food intake. Furthermore, a study by Rothgerber (2019) showed how situational contexts in experimental studies can lead to an underreporting of meat consumption. When meat consumption was made salient to female participants, they reported lower amounts of meat consumption compared to the control condition. This can further reduce the validity of self-reported meat consumption behaviour for female participants.

Possible reasons for the lack of research on observable meat consumption behaviour include the difficulties in collecting this form of data. It is more time-consuming and more expensive compared to self-report measurements or it may not be accessible for researchers at all. However, to evaluate the effectiveness of a behaviour change intervention, it is essential to also investigate observable behaviour rather than simply its predictors. To the best of our knowledge, only one experimental study has investigated the effect of providing health and environmental information on observable meat consumption behaviour. In a recent study, Jalil, Tasoff, and Bustamante (2020) tested the effect of information provision on participants’ meat consumption behaviour in the university canteen. Participants either received combined information regarding the health and environmental effects of meat consumption or about a control topic. The information was provided in a 50-minute lecture within the scope of a course in which all participants were enrolled. During the following semester, participants’ meat purchases in the university canteen were tracked with an individual purchase card which recorded all purchases. They found that providing information led to a persistent decrease in participants’ meat consumption behaviour compared to both the control condition and the baseline meat consumption. The effects attenuated over time, but remained significantly lower compared to the control measures.

Section snippets

Present study

In the present study, we build upon previous research by further investigating the effect of health and environmental information on attitude, intention, and meat consumption behaviour. Our experimental study consisted of two parts: i) an online experimental survey in which participants received either health, environmental, or control information, including a post-measure of attitude and intention to reduce meat consumption and ii) a two-week assessment of participants’ observable meat

Design

We conducted the present study in a German university canteen in November 2019. Participants were recruited through flyer distribution during lunchtime in university facilities and via social media. Eligibility criteria for participation were a regular visit to the university canteen, using the individual purchase card as payment method, consuming meat in the canteen, and living in Germany for at least one year. Participants who did not meet these criteria were automatically directed to the end

Preliminary analysis

A total of 383 participants completed the experimental survey. We excluded 107 participants from the study because they either failed to accurately summarize the information or failed to correctly answer the attention check item. In addition, we excluded 82 participants, who did not visit the canteen during the post-phase or whose dishes could not be identified. Thus, our final sample consisted of 194 participants (Mage = 23.07, SDage = 4.11, 1 diverse, 99 female, 94 male).

In the preliminary

Discussion

The present study aims to demonstrate how health and environmental information influence attitude, intention, and meat consumption behaviour. Thereby, we tested subjective knowledge as a moderator, and attitude and intention as mediators for information effectiveness. The first hypothesis could not be supported, as in our study health and environmental information did not directly influence attitude, intention, and meat consumption behaviour. This is partly in line with previous research that

Conclusion

To conclude, our study failed to find compelling evidence for an effect of a one-time provision of information in reducing students’ meat consumption behaviour in the university canteen. Our results indicate that subjective knowledge moderates the effectiveness of environmental information in influencing participant’s attitude, but this effect did not translate into a change in behaviour. Further research is required that examines observable meat consumption behaviour, rather than relying

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank the university canteen “Studierendenwerk Bonn” for the cooperation in this research project.

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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