How to reduce meat consumption
Eating meat has a negative impact on our climate. But not all consumers know this. A study in Lucerne has looked at four different target groups and suggests how they might be sensitised to the problem.
Increasing the number of vegetarian options can decrease meat consumption. | Image: shutterstock/AS Food studio
Global warming isn’t stopping. One reason for this is our excessive consumption of meat. According to the UN, livestock farming is responsible for just under 15 percent of worldwide CO2 emissions. A team from the University of Lucerne has conducted a representative survey of 1,818 people to find out what factors influence our meat consumption, and what we can do to reduce it.
In an initial step, the researchers determined the current meat consumption of their participants, all of them from the city of Lucerne. Based on their consumer habits, they then defined four target groups on a scale ranging from (1): “I’ve never considered reducing my meat consumption”, to (4): “It’s obvious to me that I should reduce my meat consumption, or even cut out meat altogether”.
In a second step, they identified the social and psychological factors that could influence the behaviour of these different group types. According to Christian Weibel, who headed up the study, so-called subjectively perceived behavioural control plays a big role here. “My behaviour can be influenced decisively by the number of vegetarian dishes I see in the canteen”, he explains. The bigger the range on offer, the more one feels able to adapt one’s own behaviour. Another important factor they identified was problem awareness. Unlike the topic of saving energy, the connection between meat consumption and climate change is not as well anchored in the public mind. “There’s a lot of work that still needs to be done in this”, says Weibel. Help could come from prominent role models, for example, if they could be made to participate in the public discourse. The Lucerne study aims to support the policies of the federal government, public authorities and NGOs in better identifying target groups and implementing appropriately tailored measures to help reduce meat consumption.
C. Weibel et al.: Reducing individual meat consumption: An integrated phase model approach. Food Quality and Preference (2019)
