Campbell-Arvai et al., 2014

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0013916512469099

Campbell-Arvai, V., Arvai, J., & Kalof, L. (2014). Motivating Sustainable Food Choices: The Role of Nudges, Value Orientation, and Information Provision. Environment and Behavior, 46(4), 453–475.

Covered by Faunalytics here: https://faunalytics.org/promoting-meat-free-meals-through-default-menus/

Summary

Default meat-free menus does result in more meat free orders. This was supposedly regardless of whether meat free options were appealing or not, though appealing meat free options were more effective. Giving student info on the environmental impact of meat did not reduce meat orders.

Abstract

Small, everyday changes in people’s behavior can have significant positive environmental impacts. To this end, the research reported here focused on the role of an asymmetric intervention (a “nudge”) in motivating choices with positive environmental outcomes. The context of this research was motivating proenvironmental food choice in campus dining halls. An experiment was conducted in which a default menu, presenting only appealing or unappealing meat-free meal options, was compared with more conventional menu configurations. The use of a default menu increased the probability that study participants would choose a meat-free meal option, and this probability increased when appealing default meal options were provided. Neither the provision of information on the menus nor the proenvironmental value orientation and worldview of participants contributed to the logistic model. These results suggest that default-based interventions can be important tools in motivating proenvironmental behavior and can serve to complement information and education efforts over the long term.

## Other notes
320 undergraduate students were approached in the dining hall of a US university campus and agreed to take part in the study in exchange for $20. They were each given a menu and asked to pick a meal for lunch or dinner. The default menu had 5 meat-free meals on it. If they received the meat-free default menu, they were told they could look at a second menu on the wall (placed around 3.5m away) for other options. The control menu had a mixture of meat-free and nonvegetarian options. Menus in the “information” treatments highlighted meat-free meals with a leaf symbol, and had this text at the bottom of the page.

Considering the fact that they divided 320 students into no fewer than 8 groups of 40, I'd be wary about claims for any specific group. Consider that the main experiment of "default / not" compares 160 to 160 (decent), whereas the comparison between appealing defaults and non appealing defaults compares 80 to 80 (just barely good enough).