Promoting sustainable eating habits: understanding the integration of dynamic social norms, goal framing, and nudges in messages to reduce meat consumption

Climate change is an increasingly topical threat, and one of its major, though often ignored, contributors is high meat consumption. Indeed, the literature review highlights how high the impact of meat production is on pollution, deforestation, emissions, and land use. High meat consumption not only harms the environment, but also poses serious direct and indirect health risks. The objective of the study is to investigate the effectiveness of messages integrating dynamic social norms, goal frames, and nudges on reducing meat consumption on the general population to promote sustainable nutrition. The study was based on the completion of a questionnaire. Participants who reported eating an omnivorous or flexitarian diet were assigned to one of four experimental conditions. Depending on the experimental condition they were assigned to, a message about reducing meat consumption was then presented. After that, subjects were asked to indicate their intention and willingness to reduce their meat consumption. Following this, participants were asked to fill out various measurement scales and a section on demographic information