‘Limiting climate change’ or ‘finding substitutes’: How does action identification influence meat consumption reduction among young adults?

Transitioning to plant-based diets is crucial for building more sustainable food systems and mitigating climate change. However, understanding how laypeople perceive the reduction of meat consumption and how these representations influence food preferences remains underexplored. According to Action Identification Theory, (1) people identify actions in various ways, from means to complex reasons, and (2) emphasizing practical means is a lever to reduce the negative impact of difficulty on action execution (i.e., the optimality hypothesis). In a first correlational study (N = 481), when participants were asked "what one does when limiting meat consumption?", they identified one set of means and three types of reasons: environmental, health-related, and ethical. Subsequently, although confirmatory analysis did not support the optimality hypothesis, an exploratory latent profile analysis revealed a tendency to focus on means when the action was difficult. However, this did not lead to a stronger intention to reduce meat intake, as only respondents perceiving both reasons and means exhibited greater engagement. In a second study (N = 165), the main analysis did not confirm the optimality hypothesis between action identification and difficulty at the experimental level, but an exploratory analysis indicated that depicting means (vs. reasons) could mitigate the negative effect of past meat consumption on food choices in an in-lab task. Taken together, these two studies suggest that Action Identification Theory could be a relevant framework for examining sustainable food practices. However, further research is needed to establish the effectiveness of means-focused strategies in disrupting the negative influence of habits on switching to more sustainable diets.