Communicating Trends in Sustainability Transitions: Minority Beliefs and Dynamic Norms about Plant-Based Food Consumption

ABSTRACT

An emerging line of research has been exploring how changes in social norms can lay the ground for shifts toward sustainability. This pre-registered study investigated the influence of communicating static and dynamic norms (2 Static x 2 Dynamic, between-subjects design) on respondents’ beliefs, intentions, information-seeking behavior, and policy support regarding plant-based food. Here, static norms referred to a minority of consumers who believed that plant-based food has a crucial role in sustainability transitions. Dynamic norms referred to how the number of people endorsing this belief had been increasing. The findings (N = 492) revealed that communicating the dynamic aspect of the minority belief increased participants’ endorsement of that same belief. Moreover, exposure to dynamic norms (alone or with static norms) had a small positive effect on policy support. These findings add to the growing body of knowledge on dynamic-norm communication.

KEYWORDS:

• Dynamic norms
• second-order beliefs
• plant-based food
• minority influence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data used in this study are openly available in Figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21207764.

Contributor details

All authors contributed to the formulation of research questions and hypotheses, to the methodological approaches, and approved the final manuscript before submission. Irene Malta oversaw the data collection, conducted statistical analyses, and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. João Graça and John Hoeks gave feedback and critical input on the study design, analyses, and manuscript text.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Groningen.