Meatless May case study

Gravity Ideas

Published in

Gravityblog

5 min readSep 7, 2018

Nudging Capetonians to reduce their meat consumption during the month of May

THE STAKEHOLDERS

Plant the Seed Education is a social enterprise based in Cape Town, South Africa. They are a collective of sustainability professionals committed to education that supports greater agency, critical thinking, collaboration, problem solving, creativity and citizenship in learners.

Gravity Ideas is a behavioural design consultancy based in Cape Town, South Africa, that focuses on using insights from the behavioural sciences to improve design assumptions and decisions relating to company products, services, programmes, and communications.

THE CHALLENGE

Cape Town, and its surrounding areas, are amidst the worst drought in living memory, and with the status declared a ‘national disaster’, government stakeholders and citizens are looking for measures to reduce water consumption for the long term. The Meatless May campaign was designed, in partnership with Plant the Seed, with this outlook in mind as it sought to prompt South Africans to reduce their meat consumption for the month of May. In food production, the largest portion of water is used by the meat industry and it is estimated that, by reducing meat consumption for one month, an individual can save more than 45 000 litres of water.

However, barriers are posed not only by social norms around meat consumption, especially in South Africa, a country renowned for its ‘braai’, but also by the hassle factors surrounding sign up and the intention action gap. This gap means that, although an individual may intend to sign up or reduce their meat consumption, their actions may not actually align with this intention.

With these barriers in mind, Gravity sought to design interventions that increased behaviour adoption (i.e. sign up) as well as behaviour adherence (i.e. commitment to meat reduction) regarding the Meatless May campaign.

THE OBJECTIVE

How can we increase the number of people who sign up to join the Meatless May campaign and, at the same time, instil commitment to reduce their meat consumption?

OUR INSIGHTS

There were several barriers that needed to be addressed in order to ensure commitment and adoption. The first is the ‘drop in the bucket’ mindset where individuals feel that their behaviour change is unlikely to make a difference to the bigger picture. Another was the barriers posed by social norms i.e. that individuals do not see others around them engaging or promoting this behaviour. Lastly, the intention action gap means that, although individuals may have the intention to adopt a specific behaviour, their commitment does not always align with that intention.

OUR INTERVENTION

The final intervention took the form of a webpage, posters, and table toppers which were placed in participating restaurants, where Capetonians would be prompted to sign up. See the Meatless May webpage here.

The following tactics were employed to increase adoption (sign up):

Perceived ease — A QR code was added to a three step process that demonstrated how simple it is to sign up. This visual demonstration was included on the table topper and poster and, once scanned, presented a link that took individuals directly to the website where they could sign up.
Salience — The table toppers and posters were placed in restaurants as these locations mean that food choices are salient and top of mind at the time of ordering.
Just-in-time reminder — The table topper served as a reminder to individuals that they should make the meatless choice just before placing their food order.
Peer-based incentive — The campaign prize, a one week holiday in Mozambique for the winner and six of their friends, employed the messenger effect, as participants had to encourage their friends to sign up and use their name as a referral to win. In turn, the use of the peer network worked to destabilise norms around meat consumption and increase the number of sign ups.
Public testimonials — Public testimonials, containing an image and statement, of participants who have made the pledge to go meatless for May were shared on Facebook and Instagram. These served as social proof to potential participants that they too should consider signing up.

The following tactics were employed to increase adherence (commitment):

Public commitment — In order to instil commitment to their pledge, participants were given the option to load their name and surname onto the sign up lists that were then made publicly available on the website. By making their commitment public, the individual risks embarrassment should they fail to see their commitment through, which increases the likelihood of their adherence.
Visualisation of process — An API that visualises how much water participants collectively saved by means of reducing their meat consumption was created. The visualisation of collective progress serves to motivate participants to continue their behaviour and adhere to their commitment.
Email series — To further instil commitment, the participants who signed up for Meatless May were sent weekly emails that employed the tactics below to increase adherence:
Make it easy — Participants were sent emails containing meat-free recipes that aim to increase the perceived ease of making unfamiliar meals.
Tailored content — Furthermore, the recipes were tailored to each participation category (meat-free Monday to Thursday, meat free all week, or vegan). This increases the salience and relevance of the information and means that participants are more likely to engage with the content.
Reminder — Finally, the email served as a constant reminder that the participant has made the pledge to go meatless for May. This email is likely to keep the commitment top of mind and so ensure that participants adhere to the necessary behaviour.

THE RESULTS

We had two core objectives that we sought to achieve in this intervention. The first was to increase the number of sign ups for the Meatless May campaign and the second was to instil commitment to the pledge.

At the end of May, 801 participants had signed up to join the campaign. In total this means that, according to feedback, 22 166 760 litres of water had been saved by the end of the month. Furthermore, according to a recent study, it takes 28 days for an individual to form a habit. As Meatless May ran for 30 days, the hypothesis was that meat reduction behaviours should become habits and therefore be sustained well into the future. In regards to this, feedback showed that 91% of participants felt 80–100% committed to the campaign during the course of the month. This was a surprising and promising result, especially given the strong cultural norms that exist around meat consumption in South Africa.