Jérôme Pivard (PSAE), joint with Olivier Allais, Stéphan Marette, Nicolas Darcel, Olga Davidenko and Anne Saint-Eve
The main objective of the study is to contribute to a better understanding of the drivers of individual choices for more environmentally virtuous food (lower CO2 emissions, reduced impact on biodiversity, etc.) in the context of university catering. The central idea is to analyze experimentally the role of the interaction between intrinsic environmental concerns (motivated by personal moral values) and concern for one’s social image (i.e., how others view us and our consumption choices) in the choice of vegetarian dishes over meat-based ones. In order to study the behavior of both vegetarians and meat-reducers – in particular, their propensity to show their choice to others – we introduce a vegetarian dish made with products from organic farming. We compare the proportions of students choosing this dish with and without a social image nudge, based on the color of the trays.
The research question is as follows: Does increasing the visibility of food choices in student catering (with the possibility of “conspicuous vegetarianism”) help to reduce meat consumption? To answer this question, we plan to recruit around 400 students and invite them to lunch in the experimental restaurant set up jointly by AgroParisTech, the Crous and INRAE. The experiment will be carried out in January, and the aim of this seminar is to get feedback on both experimental and survey designs. The study will explore how the participant’s stated environmental concern (assessed via an obfuscated pre-experimental survey, including incentivized norm measures) influences their choices and sensitivity to the nudge. A post-experimental survey will explore stated motivations for the choices in the experiment, changes in the perception of vegetarian food, and possible rebound effects due to the experiment.