Boosting peer influence for the climate? – Intervening friendship networks with serious games to promote food knowledge and reduce meat consumption

Our study addresses the urgent need for scalable tools to influence high climateimpact behaviors. To this end, we developed an interactive multiplayer game, Carbonia, designed to encourage groups of friends to reduce their consumption of foods with high climate impact, particularly meat. The game targets two main outcomes: dietary choices and knowledge about the climate impact of various foods. We compared this game-based intervention to a digital food diary and a control group keeping a diary on an unrelated topic. Our network intervention study among 702 university students from a major Chilean university allowed us to randomize treatments within real-life friend groups and non-friend groups. Results indicate that both the game and food diary treatments improved participants' knowledge of climate-impactful food choices. Additionally, data collected during the intervention suggest that the game treatment led to more climate-friendly food consumption over time.