Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Background: Out-of-home dining industry accounts for a significant and growing proportion of daily food intake in many Western countries and substantially contributes to food-system-related unsustainability issues. Nudging consumers to influence their food choice is increasingly seen as an effective solution to these issues. Despite that, there have appeared a lack of recent research on food nudging interventions employed at dining establishments. Therefore, the aim of this study was to highlight and fill this knowledge gap by producing a systematic map and narrative evidence synthesis of the academic journal articles available on the topic of choice architecture interventions employed at dining establishments to nudge consumers towards sustainable food choices. The main research question was: What type of academic research exists on nudging interventions used to promote sustainable food consumption at dining establishments?
Methods: Collaboration for Environmental Evidence (CEE) guidelines for Evidence synthesis in Environmental Management together with the RepOrting standards for Systematic Evidence Synthesis in environmental research (ROSES) were used as the main methodological guidelines.
The systematic database search was conducted on February 9th, 2024, in two databases: Web of Science and Scopus. The inclusion criteria were limited to peer/reviewed academic journal articles, depicting natural field experiments only; fully written in English and published between 2021 and 2024 February 9th. Additional Inclusion & Exclusion criteria were based on the PICO elements of the main research question. Once the search results have been extracted and duplicates deleted, followed the screening process. It consisted of three stages: 1. Title screening; 2. Abstract screening; 3. Full-text screening. The meta-data extraction and coding have been executed manually to the Excel file and were followed by a narrative data synthesis.
Results: The search identified 895 records through Web of Science and 900 records through Scopus. After the duplicate removal, a total of 1143 records were eligible for the screening process. After the final screening step, 34 articles were found to be eligible and were included in the evidence synthesis and the resulting systematized literature map. The analysis has discovered two big knowledge clusters with potential for a systematic review: 1. Studies involving Information type of nudging techniques; 2. Studies depicting food nudging experiments conducted at dining establishments of educational institutions. A major knowledge gap was identified in usage of non-Information type of nudging techniques at a “Related Objects” and “Wider Environment” focus levels.
Conclusions: There exists a need for future studies employing a much broader array of food nudging techniques than those of Information type. Additional research recommendations also include nudging experiments addressing wider spectrum of food-system-related environmental and social sustainability issues (preferably a combination of both).