Can Environmental Labeling Lead to More Sustainable Food Purchasing?

Presenter: Christine DeRieux
JHU Affiliation: Student, MS in Environmental Sciences & Policy

Description:
Food production--especially raising animals for meat--has a massive negative impact on the environment and contributes to global warming. In my research paper, that will be published in the food psychology journal "Appetite", we investigated whether information about food sustainability would increase purchases of sustainable foods by patrons of university cafés. Over several years we tested the efficacy of sustainability labels indicating the degree of environmental impact of each item on a menu (e.g. 1-5 stars based on sustainability metrics) and the respective framing (e.g. messaging of an item as sustainable and/or tasty) on promoting the purchasing of the most sustainable items. We found that women who saw the sustainability labels were significantly more likely to purchase sustainable foods, whereas men were not influenced by the labels. Additionally, we found that women were significantly more likely to purchase the most sustainable item if they learned it was sustainable or tasty, but again, the manipulations had no effect on men. We discuss why women are more likely to change their food choices to eat more sustainably than are men.