Key Food Choices and Climate Change

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Dominic Lemken
• Subject Area: Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Policy, Agricultural Sociology
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 431972934

Food choices contribute substantially to anthropogenic climate change. The agriculture and food sector ranks among the energy and transportation sector in the top three emitting industries. Unlike other consumption choices, the consumption quantity of food is much less decisive for green-house gas emissions (GHG) than the specific food choice. A few food choices stand out as particularly relevant to GHG levels. A shift in consumption patterns could significantly lower GHG. Consumer research has addressed the link of food and GHG with CO2-labelling studies, which have shown very limited success to change consumer behavior. Other studies have focused on food choices with a small climate utility, such as refusing plastic bags in retail stores. This project is dedicated to key food choices (KFC) based on GHG associated with the provision. A brief review of life-cycle assessment literature identifies beef and to lesser degree pork, cheese, air-freighted and tin-packaged products as KFC in the climate domain.Three consecutive work packages are proposed to address behavioral change with respect to KFC. (1) The first work package (WP1) specifies the products of value to consumers and analyses the consumption patterns with respect to KFC. The collected data can be used to identify consumer segments who consume a relatively large amount of KFC. These segments might relate to standard marketing characteristics. (2) The second work package (WP2) evaluates consumer preferences for substitutes of the most relevant KFC products identified in WP1. Further, WP2 proposes an experimental approach to investigate consumers’ interest in GHG-information during food decisions. The analysis will focus on consumers who frequently choose KFC products. Both work packages (WP1 and WP2) build knowledge that allows for better targeted interventions to KFC consumption. (3) The third work package (WP3) bridges the gap to intervention research and tests a nudge in the field, i.e. in an actual food decision setting. Looking into nudges and information treatments, a default nudge emerges as a promising driver of behavioral change in the food domain. WP3 will test how and to what degree a default nudge can influence canteen visitors to select a dish that substitutes the beef component over the regular beef dish. How the beef component is substituted depends on the findings from WP2. The insights from WP3 will indicate whether a climate perspective on default nudges holds substantially utility for climate change mitigation.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants