Community Leads: Yixian Sun (University of Bath); Jessica Paddock (University of Bristol); Pan He (PI), Wouter Poortinga (Cardiff University); Natalia Lawrence (University of Exeter)
The inadequacy of diets is a major contributor to key global challenges, such as climate change and health risks, largely due to prevalent excessive intakes of red and processed meat as a major protein source. In stepping into a Net Zero and more sustainable future, consumer behavioural change towards affordable and nutritious protein foods with minimum environmental impacts is urgently needed.
Studies are emerging investigating consumer preference for alternative protein foods with lower environmental impacts and high nutrition as well as how food labelling can influence people’s food choices. However, much remains unknown about consumer preference for environmental and nutritional attributes of protein foods along with other attributes in various dietary contexts. It is also unclear whether and how consumer preference varies across socio-economic status and culture, particularly in developing countries where a critical increase in meat consumption is witnessed.
Led by Dr Pan He, Lecturer in Environmental Science and Sustainability at Cardiff University, the GW4 Sustainable Food Consumption Research Community was established to tackle this by exploring how people decide which foods to purchase and what socioeconomic factors can shift consumer preferences with online experiments involving both global North and South countries.
In 2023, the group were awarded just under £20k in funding as part of GW4’s Building Communities Generator Award. The GW4 Building Communities Generator Fund is an open research call offering up to £20k to support collaborative research and innovation communities across the four GW4 universities of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter. It supports both the creation of new GW4 communities and the development of the strongest ideas emerging from our existing communities.
The community used the Generator Fund to conduct a pilot study in the UK using a questionnaire to survey over 4000 individuals in order to:
- Investigate how people value environmental and nutritional characteristics of protein foods (including red meat, chicken, fish, cell-cultured meat, and plant-based meat alternatives) along with other attributes such as taste, convenience, familiarity, food safety, etc. in various food environments (e.g. home cooking recipes vs. eating out),
- Investigate how consumer preferences and choices are differentiated across socio-economic groups,
The data from this survey will allow the community to inform policy-making which could facilitate shifts towards healthier and more sustainable diets, by identifying opportunities to remove the barriers to sustainable dietary transitions. It also situates consumer preference among various attributes of protein foods and facilitates innovation of sustainable food production, labelling, and advertisement for the food industry and catering services. The community continue to collaborate, and are exploring how the questionnaire could be adapted to other cultures for comparison.
Dr He, said: “The grant provides a great opportunity for personal development. As an early-career researcher…I have obtained intensive experience in managing the project, communicating with interdisciplinary team members, and organising workshop events.”
Our communities
The GW4 Building Communities Programme aims to build research and innovation communities of scale and capability, delivering a step change in world-class research that could not be achieved by one of the institutions alone. The Programme has two funding schemes:
- The annual Generator Fund which awards GW4 communities up to £20K for 6-month projects.
- The Development Awards which support new, and advance existing, collaborations across GW4 by funding single activities or resources with up to £5K. This is a rolling scheme, with no closing date.
More details of both schemes, and how to apply, can be found via the links above.
The grant provides a great opportunity for personal development. As an early-career researcher…I have obtained intensive experience in managing the project, communicating with interdisciplinary team members, and organising workshop events.”
