{"title":"What factors influence choosing fish over meat among grocery shoppers? Insights from an unsuccessful nudge intervention","authors":"Therese Lindahl , Noah Linder","doi":"10.1016/j.ecolecon.2024.108297","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Food production significantly impacts Earth's systems and accounts for approximately a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions. To create a more sustainable food system, scientific evidence emphasizes replacing consumption of certain types of protein with high environmental impact such as beef and pork, with protein with less-impact alternatives such as fish or vegetable protein. This study evaluates a nudge intervention at a medium sized grocery store designed to increase purchases of fish. Alongside it also examines other relevant factors influencing protein choice, such as values, attitudes, habits, demographics and price. To assess the nudge's impact a natural field experiment was designed, and the effect was measured by observing changes in sales of fish (over 59,000 items sold over 143 days). Additionally, data was collected from a selected sample of customers (<em>N</em> = 147) to further explore protein choice determinants. The results fail to demonstrate a significant effect of the nudge intervention. Instead, values, habits, attitudes and price significantly influence protein selection. These findings underscore the complexity of shopping decisions and how nudge interventions are not always easy to implement, adding important null findings to the available literature. Policy implications and possible improvements are discussed, emphasizing the need to account for habits and habit-breaking when designing interventions that aim to steer similar shopping decisions.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51021,"journal":{"name":"Ecological Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":6.6000,"publicationDate":"2024-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800924001940/pdfft?md5=70e6e954bc300696fa5095506c8e08e8&pid=1-s2.0-S0921800924001940-main.pdf","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Ecological Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800924001940","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Food production significantly impacts Earth's systems and accounts for approximately a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions. To create a more sustainable food system, scientific evidence emphasizes replacing consumption of certain types of protein with high environmental impact such as beef and pork, with protein with less-impact alternatives such as fish or vegetable protein. This study evaluates a nudge intervention at a medium sized grocery store designed to increase purchases of fish. Alongside it also examines other relevant factors influencing protein choice, such as values, attitudes, habits, demographics and price. To assess the nudge's impact a natural field experiment was designed, and the effect was measured by observing changes in sales of fish (over 59,000 items sold over 143 days). Additionally, data was collected from a selected sample of customers (N = 147) to further explore protein choice determinants. The results fail to demonstrate a significant effect of the nudge intervention. Instead, values, habits, attitudes and price significantly influence protein selection. These findings underscore the complexity of shopping decisions and how nudge interventions are not always easy to implement, adding important null findings to the available literature. Policy implications and possible improvements are discussed, emphasizing the need to account for habits and habit-breaking when designing interventions that aim to steer similar shopping decisions.
期刊介绍:
Ecological Economics is concerned with extending and integrating the understanding of the interfaces and interplay between "nature''s household" (ecosystems) and "humanity''s household" (the economy). Ecological economics is an interdisciplinary field defined by a set of concrete problems or challenges related to governing economic activity in a way that promotes human well-being, sustainability, and justice. The journal thus emphasizes critical work that draws on and integrates elements of ecological science, economics, and the analysis of values, behaviors, cultural practices, institutional structures, and societal dynamics. The journal is transdisciplinary in spirit and methodologically open, drawing on the insights offered by a variety of intellectual traditions, and appealing to a diverse readership.
Specific research areas covered include: valuation of natural resources, sustainable agriculture and development, ecologically integrated technology, integrated ecologic-economic modelling at scales from local to regional to global, implications of thermodynamics for economics and ecology, renewable resource management and conservation, critical assessments of the basic assumptions underlying current economic and ecological paradigms and the implications of alternative assumptions, economic and ecological consequences of genetically engineered organisms, and gene pool inventory and management, alternative principles for valuing natural wealth, integrating natural resources and environmental services into national income and wealth accounts, methods of implementing efficient environmental policies, case studies of economic-ecologic conflict or harmony, etc. New issues in this area are rapidly emerging and will find a ready forum in Ecological Economics.