Go with the flow: How changing the default can drive consumer choice for climate friendly menu options

Abstract

Restaurant customers typically select from pre-set menu options, as requesting alternatives requires additional cognitive and emotional effort. ‘Going with the flow’ is easier and often sufficient to meet perceived consumption goals (e.g., having a nice meal in a restaurant). This paper shows how restaurants can change the default option as a strategy to nudge customers toward more climate friendly choices. Specifically, we demonstrate, in a buffet restaurant field context, that setting a vegetarian option as the default (requiring customers to request the meat option) more than doubles the sales of the vegetarian option relative to the meat default condition. While these results build on previous research in a novel context, we also provide new insights into the default nudge, revealing a potential drawback of its effect. We find that changing the default can also divert customers from the focal product category and cause a significant decrease, 30.1 %, in overall sales at those buffet stations. However, customer satisfaction levels remain consistent across both conditions, suggesting that the drop in sales is not due to dissatisfaction with the vegetarian default but rather reflects the ease of choosing alternatives at other buffet stations. These findings offer a more nuanced perspective that, while changing the default can effectively encourage more climate friendly menu choices, it should be carefully designed to prevent potential business losses.