Nudging Towards Sustainable Dining: Exploring Menu Nudges to Promote Vegetarian Meal Choices in Restaurants

Appetite. 2024 Apr 24:107376. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2024.107376. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTFood choice behavior plays a large role in achieving sustainability goals. Meat in particular has a negative environmental impact as compared with plant-based food - and is more frequently chosen in restaurant contexts. To increase plant-based meal choices in restaurants, we tested three nudges for menus that are likely to be implemented by restaurant owners: a hedonic label (e.g., artisanal vegetable burger), a chef's recommendation (specifying the vegetarian option as the chef's favorite), and a salience nudge (a box around the vegetarian option). In an online experiment, we showed participants (n = 513) in four conditions (no nudge, hedonic label, chef's recommendation, and salience nudge) five menus with four meal options each, one of which was vegetarian. We asked participants to choose a meal and subsequently to rate these meals on how tasty and indulgent they were (taste and indulgence attributions). We then revealed which nudge was used to the participants and asked how participants received it. Results show that the hedonic label and chef's recommendation nudge (but not the salience nudge) both increase vegetarian meal choices. The hedonic label increased participants' attributions of indulgence of the meal, but not of tastiness. This finding fits with restaurants' gastronomic, pleasure-seeking context and shapes future directions of labeling interventions, namely that indul...
Source: Appetite - Category: Nutrition Authors: Source Type: research