Together towards sustainable dining – Cocreating behavioral change interventions with restaurants

Behavioral change interventions in restaurants towards sustainable food choices are a promising avenue towards attaining climate goals. In this research, we investigated how these interventions can successfully be implemented in a restaurant context to promote sustainable food choices. In a multiple-year co-creation project with 32 restaurants and consultant chefs, we provided knowledge on sustainable meal preparation and on using behavioral interventions, collaborated to design suitable interventions for the individual restaurants, and tested these interventions in a mixed methods approach. We provided support from researchers and consultant chefs throughout this process. The four restaurants that ultimately implemented an intervention were all successful in increasing uptake of their sustainable menu options. While participants' overall support and enthusiasm for knowledge of sustainability interventions was high, especially towards more sustainable meal preparation, many restaurants dropped out of the project. Despite using a time- and resource-intensive approach, it remained difficult to overcome both psychological barriers (no perceived responsibility and the sense of already “doing enough”) as well as practical hurdles (fear of customers’ response and lack of time) for restaurants. As implementation of the co-created solutions proved very challenging, future research on interventions promoting sustainable food choices should therefore specifically focus on taking away practical barriers. Possible avenues for doing so are focusing on more sustainable meal preparation, involving customers in cocreation, and a greater focus on the responsibility of the sector in culinary and hospitality education to instill sustainable habits there, which are then more easily practiced when working in the field.