Does better for the environment mean less tasty? Offering more climate-friendly meals is good for the environment and customer satisfaction

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Authors
Siegrist, Michael
Author (Corporation)
Publication date
2015
Typ of student thesis
Course of study
Type
01A - Journal article
Editors
Editor (Corporation)
Supervisor
Parent work
Appetite
Special issue
DOI of the original publication
Link
Series
Series number
Volume
95
Issue / Number
Pages / Duration
475-483
Patent number
Publisher / Publishing institution
Elsevier
Place of publication / Event location
Edition
Version
Programming language
Assignee
Practice partner / Client
Abstract
Food consumption comprises a significant portion of the total environmental impact of households. One way to reduce this impact may be to offer consumers more climate-friendly meal choices, such as when eating out. However, the environmental benefits of such an intervention will depend on not only consumers' liking of the climate-friendlier meals, but also on the perceived environmental impact. We therefore investigated the relationship between the global warming potential (GWP) of and consumers' liking of meals in two field studies in the same restaurant. Visitors to the restaurant were asked to rate the taste of the meal they had just consumed. These taste ratings were then related to the meals' GWP and number of purchases. In the second study, an intervention was tested consisting of a climate-friendly choice label and information posters. Contrary to expectations, it was found in both studies that the GWP of the meals was unrelated to the taste or the number of purchases. Offering more climate-friendly meals did not change consumer satisfaction. As expected, the introduction of the climate-friendly choice label increased the number of climate-friendly meal purchases. Therefore, offering more climate-friendly meals with a climate-friendly choice label can affect consumers' meal choices, but not their preferences or satisfaction, which is beneficial for the climate, consumers and gastronomic establishments.
Keywords
Sustainable food consumption, Customer satisfaction, Climate-friendly choice label, Intervention
Subject (DDC)
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Conference end date
Date of the last check
ISBN
ISSN
0195-6663
1095-8304
Language
English
Created during FHNW affiliation
No
Strategic action fields FHNW
Publication status
Published
Review
Peer review of the complete publication
Open access category
License
Citation
Visschers, V., & Siegrist, M. (2015). Does better for the environment mean less tasty? Offering more climate-friendly meals is good for the environment and customer satisfaction. Appetite, 95, 475–483. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2015.08.013