I’m all for experimenting with strategies for vegan outreach! Do you know of any RCTs that actually test the behavioral effects (i.e. eating meat or not) of interventions like this? I was thinking of doing a little lit review to show just how little we know about what moves the needle here
Faunalytics did an RCT comparing showing people 2D factory farming footage to 3D VR. They found that both led to lower pork consumption than the control group, and that the VR was not a meaningful improvement over 2D screens.
Another Faunalytics study compared students’ self-reported willingness to reduce consumption after viewing different videos.
The Humane League did RCTs on showing people a documentary on health, environment, & animal welfare reasons for veganism and did not find a significant effect on meat consumption. Notably, in the conclusion the authors say that “Novel intervention strategies may be needed to meaningfully shift dietary consumption away from meat and animal products.”
THL lists a few other relevant studies here that I haven’t looked at. There were also the leafletting studies by ACE and Faunalytics, both of which found leafletting to be ineffective.
With a lot of these studies, reliance on self report means that there are problems like social desirability bias.
I’ve also been thinking of writing up some kind of review, feel free to DM me if you want to collaborate :)
Thank you! Self-reported is better than nothing but worse than, eg, collecting grocery bills or monitoring consumption in a common space like a dorm-specific cafeteria. Ideal implementation partner for this kind of study is meal kit or grocery delivery company. Will take a closer look shortly
I’m all for experimenting with strategies for vegan outreach! Do you know of any RCTs that actually test the behavioral effects (i.e. eating meat or not) of interventions like this? I was thinking of doing a little lit review to show just how little we know about what moves the needle here
Yeah!
Faunalytics did an RCT comparing showing people 2D factory farming footage to 3D VR. They found that both led to lower pork consumption than the control group, and that the VR was not a meaningful improvement over 2D screens.
Another Faunalytics study compared students’ self-reported willingness to reduce consumption after viewing different videos.
The Humane League did RCTs on showing people a documentary on health, environment, & animal welfare reasons for veganism and did not find a significant effect on meat consumption. Notably, in the conclusion the authors say that “Novel intervention strategies may be needed to meaningfully shift dietary consumption away from meat and animal products.”
On the other hand, THL also published a meta-analysis with encouraging implications for interventions that focus on animal welfare-related messaging.
THL lists a few other relevant studies here that I haven’t looked at. There were also the leafletting studies by ACE and Faunalytics, both of which found leafletting to be ineffective.
With a lot of these studies, reliance on self report means that there are problems like social desirability bias.
I’ve also been thinking of writing up some kind of review, feel free to DM me if you want to collaborate :)
Thank you! Self-reported is better than nothing but worse than, eg, collecting grocery bills or monitoring consumption in a common space like a dorm-specific cafeteria. Ideal implementation partner for this kind of study is meal kit or grocery delivery company. Will take a closer look shortly