An Article Series from All-Creatures.org

Animal Rights/Vegan Activists' Strategies

Tactics In Practice: The Science Of Plant-Based Defaults And Nudges

From Björn Ólafsson, faunalytics.org
July 2024

All of this reduced meat consumption helps the planet—multiple studies confirm that using plant-based defaults reduced the climate impacts of dining halls. One study found the greenhouse gasses savings by the plant-based default program to be about 23.6%, while another analysis in New York pegged the number at 36%. Yet another estimated it to be 40.1%, while a third found the drop to be 42.7%.

Faunalytics' Research Liaison Björn Ólafsson takes a deep dive into research on the wide world of nudges, revealing best practices and possible pitfalls.

What Are Nudges And Defaults? And How Do They Work?

Many of our daily decisions aren’t the result of purposeful thought or deep consideration—but rather choices that emerge from our habits, social and physical environments, and psychological biases. Nudge theory posits that by changing the choice architecture of our decisions, we can promote better behaviors at a large scale.

In practice, imagine moving all the healthy food to the front of your refrigerator (choice architecture) to hopefully nudge you into reaching for an apple for your midnight snack instead of something you’re trying to avoid. That’s a nudge. This strategy has many advantages, not the least of which is that it doesn’t completely remove choice itself (i.e. customers aren’t throwing away all of your junk food overnight), so it’s less likely to cause major grumbling. This represents a key opportunity for animal advocates — nudges can help everyone make more pro-animal choices in their day-to-day lives without major pushback.

The key audience for nudges is not vegans, vegetarians, or strident meat-eaters, but flexitarians. This group could also be called the “persuadables” — a group of roughly 62-75% of people who, according to Pax Fauna research, are less motivated by ethics and more susceptible to social norm shifts (among other appeals).

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Please read the ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE, including:

• How Effective Are Plant-Based Default Programs?
• But What About the Long Term?
• Restaurants and Supermarkets
• Benefits For Animals AND Institutions
• How Can Nudges Be Improved?
• The Botton Line

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Posted on All-Creatures.org: September 3, 2024
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