Promoting plant-based diets in China: A field study testing environmental, health and animal welfare framing messages

Abstract

Diets comprised of more plant-based food and less meat bring benefits to the environment, health and animal welfare, so it is essential to drive dietary behavioral changes through effective interventions. However, to our knowledge, no published field study has compared how messages focusing on different motivations affect food consumption when presented in either a gains or losses framing. This study ran an experiment across 19 weeks with 35,471 food transactions at a cafeteria in an international university based in China, introducing six messages conveying the environmental, health and animal welfare motivations under a gains or losses framing. Results show that 1) health and animal welfare motivations are more statistically significant in promoting plant-based diets; 2) Health could be a key motivation in reducing meat consumption, especially when framed with losses; 3) Gains framing is more likely to stimulate plant-based food consumption; 4) The scale of increase in plant-based food consumption is significantly larger than the reduction of meat consumption. We gave recommendations of altering information provision strategies tailored to specific directions and contexts and piloting interventions before broad scale implementation to minimize resistance.