Transition pain caused by meat curtailment policies

Abstract

It is necessary to reduce meat consumption due to its impact on the climate. Various organisations, including the municipality of Amsterdam, are already taking steps to address this issue. However, these efforts often face resistance from the public. This emotional reaction hinders the establishment from implementing meat curtailment policies (MCPs). Therefore, it is essential to investigate the underlying reasons for these emotional reactions and whether these insights can be used to design meat curtailment interventions that cause less emotional responses. Consequently, this research addresses the following question: "What underlies the emotional reaction to reducing the meat supply in company restaurants, and how can these underlying reasons be used to design policies to reduce meat consumption at company restaurants?"

This study employed two research methods: emotion networking and brainstorming. The first part of the study employed emotion networking to explore the reasons behind the emotional reaction. It revealed that reducing meat consumption, whether through meat reduction policies or otherwise, evokes feelings of threats to freedom of choice, coercion, and exclusion. People perceive meat as essential and consume it consciously. These positive feelings about meat reinforce the negative feelings about reducing meat consumption. The underlying reasons for the emotional reactions seem strongly interconnected, with individuals often experiencing multiple underlying reasons.

The second part of the study consisted of a brainstorming session, focused on designing interventions based on the outcomes of the first part of the study. However, the ambiguity and interconnectedness of these emotions and underlying reasons prevented valuable interventions from being designed. This raises a crucial question: what are effective interventions?
The findings of this study contribute to the transition away from meat consumption as it showed that threats to the need to feel socially or culturally included cause resistance against reducing meat consumption, and meat offering at company’s restaurants or MCPs. Moreover, it suggests that there is a negative perception that eating vegetarian means eating meat substitutes, which causes resistance. Also, the lens of transition pain has proven insightful to research resistance against MCPs. Finally, this study suggests that designing effective interventions that do not cause resistance is complex and perhaps impossible. Consequently, it seems valuable to focus on designing interventions that effectively reduce meat consumption. Therefore, the question should be addressed: What is an effective intervention?