Order of meals at the counter and distance between options affect student cafeteria vegetarian sales
Accepted version
Peer-reviewed
Repository URI
Repository DOI
Change log
Authors
Garnett, Emma https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1664-9029
Marteau, Theresa https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3025-1129
Sandbrook, chris
Pilling, mark
Balmford, andrew
Abstract
Altering the order in which meals are presented at cafeteria counters has been proposed as a way of lowering meat consumption, but remains largely untested. To address this, we undertook two experimental studies involving 105,143 meal selections in the cafeterias of a British university. Placing vegetarian options first on the counter consistently increased their sales when choices were widely separated (>1.5 m; vegetarian sales as a percentage of total meal sales increased by 4.6 and 6.2 percentage points) but there was no evidence of an effect when the options were close together (<1.0 m). This suggests that order effects depend on the physical distance between options.
Description
Keywords
3002 Agriculture, Land and Farm Management, 30 Agricultural, Veterinary and Food Sciences, 3006 Food Sciences
Journal Title
Nature Food
Conference Name
Journal ISSN
2662-1355
2662-1355
2662-1355
Volume Title
1
Publisher
Nature
Publisher DOI
Rights
All rights reserved
Sponsorship
NERC (1796601)
NERC (NE/L002507/1)
NERC (NE/L002507/1)
This work was supported by E.E.G.’s NERC studentship grant number NE/L002507/1 and A.B.’s Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit award