The effectiveness of animal welfare-, environmental-, and health-focused video appeals on implicit and explicit wanting of meat and intentions to reduce meat consumption

ABSTRACT

The production of meat and its consumption are associated with negative consequences for the environment, the animals raised and slaughtered for food, and the health of those who consume animal-based foods. We investigated whether video appeals that addressed these topics affected participants’ wanting of meat and intentions to reduce meat relative to a control video. Results indicated only the environmental video led to increased intentions to reduce meat relative to controls. Nevertheless, implicit wanting of meat was lower in all three experimental conditions compared to the control condition. Additionally, moral emotions and agreement with the video’s message mediated the relationships between condition and implicit wanting and intentions for the animal welfare and environment conditions. For the health condition, only agreement with the message served as a mediator. These results suggest that although animal welfare-, environmental-, and health-focused video appeals may be effective at shifting immediate desire to consume meat, environmental video appeals may be the most effective for increasing intentions to change future meat intake.

KEYWORDS:

• Meat reduction
• wanting
• animal welfare
• environmental
• health

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/2mte4.

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badges for Open Data and Open Materials through Open Practices Disclosure. The data and materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/2mte4.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Luke Herchenroeder

Luke Herchenroeder is a doctoral student in Applied Social Psychology at George Washington University. His research interests include examining social psychological processes that incluence eating behaviors and substance use.

Catherine A. Forestell

Catherine A. Forestell is a Professor of Psychological Sciences at William & Mary. Her research investigates the cognitive, social, and environmental mechanisms that contribute to the development of flavor and food preferences in infancy and childhood and the daily food choices and dietary habits of adults.

Adrian J. Bravo

Adrian J. Bravo is an Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences at William & Mary. His research interests focus on identifying who is most susceptible to the development of substance use and mental health disorders, under what conditions individuals engage in health risk behaviors that lead to poor mental health outcomes and problematic substance use, and what factors may decouple the relation between health risk factors and health outcomes across distinct populations (i.e., college students, clinical populations, and military personnel).