Research summary: A Meta-Review of Interventions that Influence Animal-Product Consumption

The Rapid Effective Action Development Initiative (READI) recently completed a meta-review of interventions that influence animal-product consumption.

The work was led by Emily Grundy and conducted in collaboration with EA-aligned researchers and organisations.

We screened 11989 papers to find 18 relevant reviews.  

We planned to convert effect sizes from reviews to a common metric and conduct meta-meta-analyses, however we needed to deviate from our protocol because so few reviews reported effect sizes of primary studies. 

Instead, we undertook vote counting based on direction of effect— an acceptable statistical synthesis method for when meta-analysis of effect estimates is not possible  and consistent effect measures or data are not reported across studies.

Summary of evidence for interventions 

Below is a quick visual summary of the evidence for the each of interventions covered (see PowerPoint here, or table here).

Providing information

Implicitly emphasising animal welfare

Goal-setting and self-monitoring

Social consequences of eating meat

Default plant-based meals

Providing meat alternatives

Description of meat / meat alternatives

Economic interventions

Personalised messaging

Individual lifestyle counselling

Reducing meat portion sizes

References

¹Harguess and colleagues (2020), ²Bianchi and colleagues (2018), ³Hartmann and Siegrist (2017), ⁴ Veul (2018), ⁵Graça and colleagues (2019), ⁶Valli and colleagues (2019), ⁷Taufik and colleagues (2019, ⁸Wynes and colleagues (2018), ⁹Nisa and colleagues (2019), ¹⁰Bianchi and colleagues (2018b), ¹¹Sanchez-Sabate and Sabaté (2019) ,¹²Byerly and colleagues (2018). Full citations are available in the preprint.

A detailed academic report on the project is being revised for submission. Here is a preview  (PDF here):

Depending on feedback, we may release a longer plain language summary in the future or develop a related database to help researchers and practitioners to build on the research.

Feedback

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Previous and ongoing READI work

We have previously completed a review and public summary for 'What works to promote charitable donations?

In the Survey of COVID-19 Responses to Understand Behaviour (SCRUB)  we aim to provide current and future policy makers with actionable insights into public attitudes and behaviours relating to the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past 16 months, we (mainly Emily Grundy and Alexander Saeri) have been receiving ongoing funding (as employees of BehaviourWorks Australia) from the Victorian Government in Australia to run the survey periodically . Our results directly inform Covid-19 response policy. Several related publications (e.g., 1, 2, ,3) have been accepted in academic journals. Several more are planned once data embargoes are lifted.

Our next project is likely to focus on Improving Institutional Decision Making (IIDM). 

Opportunities to engage with future research

If relevant then please consider applying for Micheal's PhD Scholarships for EA projects in psychology, health, IIDM, or education. 

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank everyone involved in completing and supporting the research: Emily A. C. Grundy¹, Peter Slattery¹, Alexander K. Saeri¹, Kieren Watkins², Thomas Houlden³, Neil Farr, Henry Askin, Joannie Lee³, Alexandria Mintoft-Jones, Sophia Cyna⁴, Alyssa Dziegielewski⁵, Romy Gelber³, Amy Rowe⁶, Maya B. Mathur⁷, Shane Timmons^{8, 9}, Kun Zhao¹, Matti Wilks¹⁰, Jacob Peacock¹¹, Jamie Harris¹², Daniel L. Rosenfeld¹³, Chris Bryant¹⁴, David Moss¹⁵, Michael Noetel¹⁶

¹BehaviourWorks Australia, Monash Sustainable Development Institute, Monash University, ²School of Agriculture and Food, University of Melbourne, ³University of New South Wales, ⁴University of Sydney, ⁵Macquarie University, ⁶University of Adelaide, ⁷Quantitative Sciences Unit, Stanford University, ⁸Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin, Ireland, ⁹School of Psychology, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland., ¹⁰Yale University,  ¹¹Director of The Humane League Labs, ¹²Sentience Institute, ¹³Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, ¹⁴Department of Psychology, University of Bath, UK, ¹⁵Faculty of Education, Canterbury Christ Church University, ¹⁶School of Health and Behavioural Sciences, Australian Catholic University

We thank Annet Hoek and Jo Anderson for their contributions to the research direction of this project and the manuscript.

Disclaimer

I wrote this summary quickly with relatively little oversight from the rest of the research team. I take responsibility for any mistakes or misrepresentation.