Abstract
Reducing red meat consumption in high-consuming countries is critical for mitigating climate change and preventing chronic disease. This study tested the effectiveness of messages conveying the worsening or reduction of environmental harms at discouraging red meat consumption. 1078 U.S. adults viewed seven messages in an online survey highlighting the reduction or worsening of environmental harms associated with eating red meat (between-subjects factor) and rated the messages on how much they discouraged them from wanting to buy beef. Each message highlighted a different environmental harm: deforestation, climate change, water shortages, biodiversity loss, carbon footprint, greenhouse gas emissions, or environment (within-subjects factor). No statistically significant difference was found between the reduction and worsening of environmental harms conditions for most topics, though the worsening of harms frame slightly outperformed the reduction of harms frame for the ‘environment’ topic. ‘Environment’ was also the message topic that elicited the strongest response from participants overall. Latino participants, those with more than a high school degree, and those who consume beef once a week or less rated messages as more effective than non-Latino participants, those who completed high school or less, and those who consumed beef more than once a week. Future research should explore the effect of messages on behavioral outcomes.
Highlights
Reducing red meat consumption in countries with high levels of consumption was identified by the 2019 EAT-Lancet commission as a strategy that would benefit both the environment and human health [1]
The finding that the message frames describing either the worsening or reduction of environmental harms were discouraging is in contrast to existing research that has explored the impacts of goal framing in environmental messages
This study is one of the first that has explored the impact of goal or emphasis framing on messages aimed at reducing red meat consumption
Summary
Reducing red meat consumption in countries with high levels of consumption was identified by the 2019 EAT-Lancet commission as a strategy that would benefit both the environment and human health [1]. II diabetes [5], stroke [6], coronary heart disease [6], heart failure [6], obesity [7], and allcause mortality [8,9]. Because of these relationships, organizations including the American. Substituting whole, plant-based foods such as nuts, legumes, and whole grains for red meat is associated with a lower risk of type II diabetes [12,13] and mortality risk [14] and can lead to an increase in life expectancy [15]. One meta-analysis concluded that reducing or eliminating consumption of red or processed meat would reduce the risk of stroke, coronary heart disease, and heart failure [6].
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