Short presentation followed by Q&A with Dr Charlotte Kukowski (Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge) Reducing UK Meat Consumption: The Promise of Targeting Decision Contexts
Coffee Break Seminars are a relaxed online learning and discussion platform for our food security community. Talks take place every Friday during term time at 2 pm, UK time. Please find the event recording here.
Abstract:
Livestock production is the single largest driver of land use and a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, and biodiversity loss. Staying within safe limits of the food system requires shifts in diets, most notably, reducing (ruminant) meat consumption. While meat intake in the U.K. has decreased slightly over recent years, current per-capita consumption still exceeds sustainable limits. In this talk, Dr Kukowski will provide an overview of current guidelines for sustainable diets, the changes needed to get us there, and what behavioural science research has to say on how we can achieve the required dietary shifts. She will also outline how targeting decision contexts – the physical, social, and fiscal environments in which consumers make dietary choices – can help bring about behaviour change. Lastly, she will draw attention to how issues of inequality affect the responsibility for dietary behaviour change and the feasibility of effecting such change.
Speaker:
Dr. Charlotte A. Kukowski is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab (Department of Psychology) and the Conservation Science Group (Department of Zoology) at the University of Cambridge. Her research investigates how physical and social environments facilitate and obstruct changes in high-carbon behaviours, particularly meat consumption. In adjacent lines of work, Charlotte examines links between the feasibility of behaviour change and policy support, climate and health inequality, climate misinformation, and self-regulation.