Promoting plant-based food choices: Findings from a field experiment with over 150,000 consumer decisions

Abstract

Plant-based foods offer great promise for ensuring environmental sustainability. However, encouraging people to replace meat-based meals with plant-based meals is a difficult feat, as people often perceive meat consumption as socially normal, evolutionarily natural, and satisfying in taste. In the current research, we tested a subtle strategy for changing eating behavior. Through a 10-week field experiment, we investigated how different frames for vegetarian and vegan menu items influence consumer behavior in a real-world setting. We randomly varied whether vegetarian and vegan items on a restaurant's menu were referred to as “vegetarian” and “vegan” vs. “plant-based.” Throughout the experiment, we tracked 167,637 consumer decisions. Items were 24% more likely to sell when they were marketed as vegetarian/vegan than when they were marketed as plant-based. These findings highlight the potential for frames to promote plant-based food choices, offering a subtle strategy for changing consumer behavior and supporting sustainability efforts.