Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Consumers’ Motivations Towards Environment-Friendly Dietary Changes: An Assessment of Trends Related to the Consumption of Animal Products

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Handbook of Climate Change Across the Food Supply Chain

Part of the book series: Climate Change Management ((CCM))

Abstract

In the context of global warming and environmental pressure, food chains must adapt to new production conditions while satisfying the evolving consumer demand. Livestock production is known for its negative ecological footprint, bringing forward the question of a possible transition towards more plant-based diets. Citizens’ demand evolves at different speeds and integrates these new environmental concerns sometimes mixed with health or ethical issues. We carried out a survey with 1,715 respondents in France, about their food choice priorities and preferences, as well as the drivers of change. Our results indicate that 40% of respondents claim that their current diet is not what they would ideally have and 98% of them would like to reduce their animal product consumption. Classification algorithms reveals several salient variables separating classes of individuals wishing to shift their food diet towards less animal products: the willingness to change is stronger for the youngest, hindrances to change are food pleasure, health and to a lesser extent social resistance and animal ethics. The less radical the animal products reduction is the more environmental concerns are the main motivation.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 139.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 179.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 179.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.kialo.com/the-ethics-of-eating-animals-is-eating-meat-wrong-1229?path=1229.01229.1.

  2. 2.

    Random Forest Classifier:

    https://scikit-learn.org/stable/modules/generated/sklearn.ensemble.RandomForestClassifier.html.

References

  • Aleksandrowicz L, Green R, Joy EJ, Smith P, Haines A (2016) The impacts of dietary change on greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water use, and health: a systematic review. PloS One 11(11):e0165797

    Google Scholar 

  • Bastin J-F, Finegold Y, Garcia C, Mollicone D, Rezende M, Routh D, Zohner CM, Crowther TW (2019) The global tree restoration potential. Science 365(6448):76–79

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Breiman L (2001) Random forests. Mach Learn 45(1):5–32

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clark MA, Springmann M, Hill J, Tilman D (2019) Multiple health and environ-mental impacts of foods. Proc Natl Acad Sci 116(46):23357–23362

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Demšar J, Curk T, Erjavec A, Gorup Č, Hočevar T, Milutinovič M, Možina M, Polajnar M, Toplak M, Starič A, Štajdohar M, Umek L, Žagar L, Žbontar J, Žitnik M, Zupan B (2013) Orange: data mining toolbox in python. J Mach Learn Res 14:2349–2353

    Google Scholar 

  • Fehér A, Gazdecki M, Véha M, Szakály M, Szakály Z (2020) A comprehensive review of the benefits of and the barriers to the switch to a plant-based diet. Sustainability 12(10):4136

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Festinger L (1957) A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford University Press

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gerber PJ, Steinfeld H, Henderson B, Mottet A, Opio C, Dijkman J, Falcucci A, Tempio G et al (2013) Tackling climate change through livestock: a global assessment of emissions and mitigation opportunities. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

    Google Scholar 

  • Godfray HCJ, Aveyard P, Garnett T, Hall JW, Key TJ, Lorimer J, Pierrehumbert RT, Scarborough P, Springmann M, Jebb SA (2018) Meat consumption, health, and the environment. Science 361(6399):eaam5324

    Google Scholar 

  • Graça J, Godinho CA, Truninger M (2019) Reducing meat consumption and following plant-based diets: current evidence and future directions to inform integrated transitions. Trends Food Sci Technol 91:380–390

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Herzog H (2011) Why do most vegetarians go back to eating meat? Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/animals-and-us/201106/why-do-most-vegetarians-go-back-eating-meat. Accessed 30 July 2020

  • Jabs J, Devine CM, Sobal J (1998) Model of the process of adopting vegetarian diets: health vegetarians and ethical vegetarians. J Nutr Educ 30(4):196–202

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kim BF, Santo RE, Scatterday AP, Fry JP, Synk CM, Cebron SR, Mekonnen MM, Hoekstra AY, De Pee S, Bloem MW et al (2019) Country-specific dietary shifts to mitigate climate and water crises. Glob Environ Change 101926

    Google Scholar 

  • Macdiarmid JI, Douglas F, Campbell J (2016) Eating like there’s no tomorrow: public awareness of the environmental impact of food and reluctance to eat less meat as part of a sustainable diet. Appetite 96:487–493

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mottet A, de Haan C, Falcucci A, Tempio G, Opio C, Gerber P (2017) Livestock: on our plates or eating at our table? A new analysis of the feed/food debate? Glob Food Secur 14:1–8

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nelson ME, Hamm MW, Hu FB, Abrams SA, Griffin TS (2016) Alignment of healthy dietary patterns and environmental sustainability: a systematic review. Adv Nutr 7(6):1005–1025

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pedregosa F, Varoquaux G, Gramfort A, Michel V, Thirion B, Grisel O, Blondel M, Prettenhofer P, Weiss R, Dubourg V et al (2011) Scikit-learn: machine learning in python. J Mach Learn Res 12:2825–2830

    Google Scholar 

  • Perignon M, Masset G, Ferrari G, Barré T, Vieux F, Maillot M, Amiot-Carlin MJ, Darmon N (2016) How low can dietary greenhouse gas emissions be reduced without impairing nutritional adequacy, affordability and acceptability of the diet? A modelling study to guide sustainable food choices? Public Health Nutr 19(14):2662–2674

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Poore J, Nemecek T (2018) Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science 360(6392):987–992

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Povey R, Conner M, Sparks P, James R, Shepherd R (1999) A critical examination of the application of the transtheoretical model’s stages of change to dietary behaviours. Health Educ Res 14(5):641–651

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Rose D, Heller MC, Willits-Smith AM, Meyer RJ (2019) Carbon footprint of self-selected US diets: nutritional, demographic, and behavioral correlates. Am J Clin Nutr 109(3):526–534

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ruby MB (2012) Vegetarianism. A blossoming field of study. Appetite 58(1):141–150

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Salliou N, Taillandier P, Thomopoulos R (2019) Vitamin project dataset (VegetarIan Transition Argument ModellINg). https://doi.org/10.15454/HOBUZH. Accessed 30 July 2020

  • Salliou N, Thomopoulos R (2018) Modelling multicriteria argument networks about reduced meat consumption. In: FOODSIM’2018, pp 46–51

    Google Scholar 

  • Salliou N, Thomopoulos R (2020) Adopting, adhering to or abandoning veganism: insights on vegan diet transitions from life story accounts. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.34770.99520. Accessed 30 July 2020

  • Sans P, Combris P (2015) World meat consumption patterns: an overview of the last fifty years (1961–2011). Meat Sci 109:106–111

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Scarborough P, Appleby PN, Mizdrak A, Briggs AD, Travis RC, Bradbury KE, Key TJ (2014) Dietary greenhouse gas emissions of meat-eaters, fish-eaters, vegetarians and vegans in the UK. Clim Change 125(2):179–192

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Seconda L, Baudry J, Alles B, Boizot-Szantai C, Soler L-G, Galan P, Hercberg S, Langevin B, Lairon D, Pointereau P, Kesse-Guyot E (2018) Comparing nutritional, economic, and environmental performances of diets according to their levels of greenhouse gas emissions. Clim Change 148(1–2):155–172

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Springmann M, Clark M, Mason-D’Croz D, Wiebe K, Bodirsky BL, Lassaletta L, De Vries W, Vermeulen SJ, Herrero M, Carlson KM et al (2018) Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits. Nature 562(7728):519–525

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Stoll-Kleemann S, Schmidt UJ (2017) Reducing meat consumption in developed and transition countries to counter climate change and biodiversity loss: a review of influence factors. Reg Environ Change 17(5):1261–1277

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Taillandier P, Salliou N, Thomopoulos R (2019) Coupling agent-based models and argumentation framework to simulate opinion dynamics: application to vegetarian diet diffusion. In: Social simulation conference 2019. https://easychair.org/publications/preprint/Cp8n. Accessed 30 July 2020

  • Thomopoulos R, Cufi J, Le Breton M (2020) A generic software to support collective decision in food chains and in multi-stakeholder situations. In: FOODSIM’2020. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02484363v2/document. Accessed 30 July 2020

  • Thomopoulos R, Salliou N, Abreu C, Cohen V, Fouqueray T (2019) Reduced meat consumption: from multicriteria argument modeling to agent-based social simulation. Int J Food Stud (In Press). https://hal.inria.fr/hal-02265760/document. Accessed 30 July 2020

  • Tilman D, Clark M (2014) Global diets link environmental sustainability and human health. Nature 515(7528):518–522

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Vabo M, Hansen H (2014) The relationship between food preferences and food choice: a theoretical discussion. Int J Bus Soc Sci 5(7):145–157

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work is part of the VITAMIN project (“VegetarIan Transition Argument ModellINg”) funded by INRAE.

We would like to thank Thomas Pereira for his help in writing the python script automating the data pre-processing step.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Univ Montpellier, INRAE, CIRAD, Montpellier SupAgro, INRIA, IATE, 34060, Montpellier, France

    Rallou Thomopoulos

  2. ETH Zurich, IRL, PLUS, Stefano-Franscini-Platz 5, 8093, Zurich, Switzerland

    Nicolas Salliou

  3. Univ Toulouse, INRAE, MIAT, Castanet-Tolosan, France

    Patrick Taillandier

  4. Universit ́e Paris-Saclay, INRAE, UMR 518 MIA, Paris, France

    Alberto Tonda

Authors
  1. Rallou Thomopoulos
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Nicolas Salliou
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Patrick Taillandier
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Alberto Tonda
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rallou Thomopoulos .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. FTZ-NK, HAW Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

    Walter Leal Filho

  2. Faculty of Agriculture, University of Belgrade, Zemun-Belgrade, Serbia

    Ilija Djekic

  3. DIL German Institute of Food Technologies, Quakenbrück, Niedersachsen, Germany

    Sergiy Smetana

  4. FTZ-NK, HAW Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

    Marina Kovaleva

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Thomopoulos, R., Salliou, N., Taillandier, P., Tonda, A. (2022). Consumers’ Motivations Towards Environment-Friendly Dietary Changes: An Assessment of Trends Related to the Consumption of Animal Products. In: Leal Filho, W., Djekic, I., Smetana, S., Kovaleva, M. (eds) Handbook of Climate Change Across the Food Supply Chain. Climate Change Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-87934-1_17

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation