From isolated labels and nudges to sustained tinkering: assessing long-term changes in sustainable eating at a lunch restaurant

Abstract

PurposeThe critical role of diet in climate change mitigation has raised behavioural approaches to the top of the agenda. In this paper, the authors take a critical look at these behavioural approaches and call for a more dynamic, practice-oriented understanding of long-term changes in sustainable food consumption and supply.Design/methodology/approachThis approach is based on the experiences from a long-term experiment promoting sustainable eating in a workplace lunch restaurant using a series of informational and nudging techniques. In the experiment, the authors found that focussing solely on eating behaviours did not help to capture the multi-level change processes mobilised. The authors therefore propose a more dynamic, practice-oriented methodology for examining long-term changes in sustainable eating. The emprical data of the experiment are based on qualitative and quantitative data, consisting of customer survey, customer and kitchen personnel focus group discussions and monitoring data on the use of food items in the restaurant and their climate impacts.FindingsThe results draw attention to a series of practical challenges restaurants face when promoting sustainable eating. Directing analytical attention to tinkering helped to reveal the tensions brought about by labelling and nudging in menu planning and recipe development. The results show how tinkering required attentiveness to customers' wishes in both cases. Nudging offered more freedom for the restaurant to develop menus and recipes. In the case scrutinised, however, nudging customers towards tastier and more satiating vegetarian dishes included the use of dairy. This partly watered down the climate benefits gained from reduced meat consumption.Originality/valueRather than looking separately at changes in consumer behaviour and in the supply of food, the authors show how we need analytical concepts that enable the evaluation of their mutual evolution. Tinkering can assist us in this endeavour. Its adaptive, adjustive character, however, calls for caution. The development of praxis in food services and catering requires critical companions from the transdisciplinary research community. Research can provide systematic knowledge on the impacts of labels and nudges on kitchen praxis. However, research itself also needs to tinker and learn from experiments. This necessitates long-term speculative research strategies.

Reconfigurations in sustainability transitions: a systematic and critical review

“…As also noted by Shove and Walker (2010, 475), "enduring and relatively stable practices (and complexes of practice) do exist but only because they are consistently and faithfully reproduced, not because they have achieved some kind of closure." Even established practices, be it those of everyday eating, cooking, or household management, thus continually evolve and can be disrupted and reconfigured in various ways Kaljonen et al 2020;; see also Spurling et al 2013).…”

“…Two distinct literatures have become especially prominent in this field: the research on socio-technical transitions (and the multi-level perspective (MLP) in particular) (e.g., Geels 2002;Schot and Geels 2008) and applications of social practice theory (SPT, e.g., Shove and Walker 2010). Moreover, there is a growing body of research that aims to identify crossovers and intersections in these two approaches (e.g., McMeekin and Southerton 2012;Shove and Walker 2010), as well as to provide empirical examples of practice-based approaches to transformative change (e.g., Godin, Laakso, and Sahakian 2020;Hargreaves, Longhurst, and Seyfang 2013;Heiskanen et al 2018;Kaljonen et al 2020;Laakso 2017;Seyfang and Gilbert-Squires 2019). The objective of this article is to contribute to these efforts, by creating further dialogue between transition and practice theories.…”

Priorities for social science and humanities research on the challenges of moving beyond animal-based food systems

“…Emel and Neo, 2015;Fitzgerald and Taylor, 2015;Fourat and Lepiller, 2017;Weis, 2007Weis, , 2013 has been accompanied by work on the governance and politics of transitions towards lowering meat production and consumption (e.g. de Bakker and Dagevos, 2012;de Boer et al, 2014;Chiles, 2016;Garnett et al, 2015;Laestadius et al, 2014;Kaljonen et al, 2019Kaljonen et al, , 2020Morris et al, 2014;Morris, 2019;Singer, 2016;Vinnari and Vinnari, 2014) as well as work on transforming food practices that make meat central to the Western plate and beyond (cf. Shove et al, 2012;Potts, 2016;Efstathiou et al, 2019;Hansen and Jakobsen, 2020).…”

Promises of meat and milk alternatives: an integrative literature review on emergent research themes

“…They may also foreclose discussions about the necessary reductions in the overall protein consumption levels in Western diets. Further work could build links with existing research on food practices in order to better understand how individual products become staples in our diets and shared practices of eating (see, for example, Goodman 2016;Hayes-Conroy 2010, 2013;Kaljonen et al 2020;Plessz and Wahlen 2020;Warde 2016). Currently, research on alternative products and eating practices are largely carried out within different realms (although see e.g.…”

“…Although highlighting the importance of skills, the reviewed articles pay less attention to the (material) practices of eating and consumption. For example, research inspired by practice theories highlights that beliefs and attitudes about food are only translated into food practices through the shared, material and even visceral relations in everyday life (see, for example, Goodman 2016; Hayes-Conroy and Hayes-Conroy 2010, 2013;Kaljonen et al 2020;Peltola et al 2020;Plessz and Wahlen 2020;Warde 2016). Thus, one should be wary of drawing conclusions related to manifested eating practices based on the reviewed studies focusing on attitudes and opinions on eating.…”