Gain framing increases support for measures promoting plant-based eating in university settings

Ana Sofia Marques Carvalho,Cristina Isabel Albuquerque Godinho,João Graça

doi:10.1016/j.foodqual.2021.104500

Ana Sofia Marques Carvalho, Cristina Isabel Albuquerque Godinho + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2021.104500

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Abstract

Global concerns with public health, animal suffering, and environmental problems linked to meat-centric diets have increased over the last decade. One way to help address these concerns is to implement measures that reduce meat consumption and increase plant-based eating in collective meal contexts, such as catering services in schools and universities. The present study provides insight into how consumers may react to these measures. A simple experiment (within-subjects design; N = 295) tested whether framing a set of plant-forward measures in terms of gain (i.e., measures to promote or increase the consumption of plant-based meals) or loss (i.e., measures to curtail or reduce the consumption of meals with meat) impacted consumer support for these measures in university settings. The results showed that consumer support was higher for gain-framed measures compared to loss-framed measures. Furthermore, the impact of framing was higher for measures focusing on sensory cues (e.g., make plant-based meals tastier and more appealing vs. make meals with meat less tasty and less appealing) and lower for measures focusing on behavioral constraints (e.g., serve only plant-based meals vs. do not serve meals with meat). Overall, the findings suggest that framing plant-forward measures in terms of gain can be a simple and potentially effective way to increase consumer support for food sustainability transitions.

Highlights

In recent years, meat-centric diets have been reported to cause harmful consequences on human health, animal welfare, and environ mental sustainability
The results showed that the most supported measure was “Make plant-based meals served in uni versity canteens more appealing and tastier” and the least supported measure was “Make meals with meat served in university canteens less appealing and less tasty”
The measure that received the highest level of consumer support in the current study was to “Make plant-based meals served in university canteens more appealing and tastier”, whereas the measure that received the lowest level of support was to “Make meals with meat served in university canteens less appealing and less tasty”

Summary

Introduction

Meat-centric diets have been reported to cause harmful consequences on human health, animal welfare, and environ mental sustainability (e.g., non-communicable diseases; pandemic risk; antibiotic resistance; animal suffering; biodiversity loss; greenhouse gas emissions; e.g., Willett et al, 2019). Substantial evidence has shown that animalbased foods (i.e., meat and dairy products) tend to require more re sources and cause greater environmental impact when compared to plant-based foods (e.g., Clark & Tilman, 2017). To address these pressing challenges and move towards more sus tainable food systems, the Planetary Health Diet stresses the need to shift current food consumption patterns towards increasingly plant-based diets (Willett et al, 2019). Assessing public support for these policies and interventions is crucial to inform policy and decision-makers about the planning and the imple mentation of such measures (Diepeveen et al, 2013; Graça et al, 2020)

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