Study: Carbon Footprint Influences Meat Consumers

April 8, 2021
Consumers can be influenced by information about greenhouse gases, even when they say they don’t want to hear it, according to a Swedish study.

Consumers can be influenced by information about the impact of meat and meat substitutes on greenhouse gases, even when they say they don’t want to hear it, according to a Swedish study.

The study, conducted by the University of Copenhagen and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, was based on an online questionnaire of 803 Swedes. They were asked to choose one of six minced protein products, one of which was a plant-based analogue, and then were asked if they would like to receive information on the carbon footprint of each product.

Then they were asked to choose among the products again, this time with the carbon footprint information included – whether they had asked to receive it or not.

About one-third of respondents initially said they weren’t interested in carbon footprints. But even they were influenced by the information, the study found.

Researchers compared choices before and after exposure to the climate-impact information, measuring them in terms of their ecological impact. They found that after seeing the information, the new choices had 25% less impact on the environment than the old ones. This broke down as 32% for the respondents who had expressed interest in the climate-impact information, and 16% among those who didn’t.

The researchers told Anthropocene Magazine that the results suggest some of the people who said they weren’t interested in the information are actively trying to avoid it, as opposed to being indifferent. They suggested that putting carbon-impact information on front labels, in hard-to-miss formats, would have an appreciable impact.

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