Abstract
The food system is responsible for a quarter of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Diminishing the consumption of animal-based food can reduce food-system related GHG emissions by up to 70%, and has additional positive implications on land use, water use, food waste and public health. This study explores effective ways of influencing food choices of hotel and restaurant patrons to reduce their meat consumption through menu (re-) design. More specifically, the study compares several nudging and normative approaches in persuading hotel and restaurant patrons to reduce selection of dishes with high animal-food intensity. Implementing an online scenario-based experiment, this study employs a 2 (types of restaurants) X 4 (nudging interventions) X 3 (normative interventions) X 2 (rounds of application) between-subject experimental design. The dependent variable captures intended restaurant menu choices of study participants, in particular the meat-intensity of dishes selected. The experiment also investigates compensation effects and controls for consumer satisfaction. The results contribute to an emerging multi-disciplinary body of literature on increasing plant-based food consumption to reduce carbon intensity, land use, water use and safeguard biodiversity. The study makes an original and novel contribution as there is very limited research on the topic in a hospitality and tourism context. Moreover, no existing study has attempted comparing different approaches of behaviour change in this particular area of reducing meat consumption in hospitality.