Informational Nudges or Incentives? A Field Experiment on Vegetarian Choices

Food production and consumption are primary contributors to climate change. There is growing interest in behavioral interventions aimed at reducing emissions by promoting vegetarian choices. This pre-registered field experiment assesses the (relative) effectiveness of an informational nudge, a price intervention, and their combination on consumers' choices between meat-based and vegetarian food options. We analyze actual food choices at a public festival with a food market area, where participants receive an informational nudge designed to increase the choice of vegetarian food and different financial incentives in the form of food vouchers for vegetarian options. The analysis reveals no significant effect of the informational nudge, while the price intervention significantly reduces the likelihood of choosing meat-based options over vegetarian ones. Additionally, exploratory analyses focus on two temporal aspects related to the delivery of our interventions: a measure of exposure duration for participants who engaged with the informational nudge and the time elapsed between exposure to the informational nudge and the actual food choice.