Encouraging sustainable food consumption through nudges: An experiment with menu labels

Finding ways to steer consumers' food choices towards vegetarian and plant-based meals is important to reduce our diets' environmental impact. This paper investigates how nudges in restaurants can be effectively used to increase sales of vegetarian and plant-based dishes. We partnered with two restaurants, which can host up to 130 guests in total and are in the same building, and we tested the effect of three nudge-based interventions on the sales of vegetarian and plant-based dishes. We found that removing the symbols for vegetarian and plant-based dishes increased the sales of those starters by 10.2 pp., and of those mains by 6.2 pp. When a low emissions symbol was added to the menu to replace the symbols for vegetarian and plant-based dishes, it did not affect sales. However, when the same nudge was made transparent through a statement explaining its purpose on the menu, the sales of those starters increased by 14.1 pp. This result suggests that nudges can be used ethically and still be effective. Overall, these findings support the use of nudges as cost-effective interventions to tackle the issue of unsustainable food consumption in the hospitality sector