The effect of information provision on attitude, intention, and food choice behaviour

Abstract

The agricultural and food sector in Germany is facing a number of challenges. Consumers are increasingly dissatisfied with contemporary livestock production and, in addition, livestock farming accounts for a substantial share of global greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, the prevalence of nutrition-related disease rises. Whereas consumers’ meat intake on average exceeds recommendations, whole grain intake rarely meets the recommended levels. Thus, effective strategies are needed to influence consumers’ acceptance of contemporary livestock farming, and dietary behaviour with respect to meat and whole grain intake. Providing information is one of several different policy instruments that can be used to influence consumers’ attitude, intention, and food choice behaviour. Information campaigns are classified as a soft intervention, do not limit consumers’ freedom of choice, and yield rather high acceptance rates among consumers. Although a number of theoretical frameworks can account for the effect of information provision, the empirical evidence for an effect of information provision on behaviour yields mixed evidence.<br /> The goal of this cumulative thesis is to further investigate the effectiveness of information provision as an intervention to influence attitudes, intentions, and food choice behaviour. Moreover, this thesis investigates factors that determine the effectiveness of information provision. Related to the contemporary challenges of agricultural and food sector, this thesis investigates the effect of information in the domain of acceptance of animal husbandry, meat consumption, and whole grain consumption with four experimental studies (n = 1087). The results indicate that information provision can have beneficial effects on consumer attitude, intention, and food choice behaviour, which supports the use of information provision as a policy tool. Elements that have shown to increase the effectiveness of information provision were the inclusion of health-related information and repeated exposure to the information. Moreover, for certain types of information such as environmental information, target group-oriented information tailoring might be superior in order to change attitudes. Hence, to achieve a transition towards higher societal acceptance of animal husbandry, reduced levels of meat consumption, and increased whole grain consumption, information provision is a promising avenue for the agricultural and food sector.