Taking action through stories: Promoting carbon-neutral meat consumption with narrative and message framing

Abstract

Carbon-neutral meat products offer a unique opportunity to reduce anthropogenic emissions. Supporting the growth of carbon-neutral meat is carbon labelling, an initiative to encourage environmentally friendly behaviour via information transparency. However, the efficacy of carbon labels remains questionable because consumers mainly cannot comprehend and connect with the labels. This raises a question of how communication could be leveraged to bridge that information asymmetry. Through five online controlled experiments, the study demonstrates the usefulness of narrative storytelling and message framing in heightening the effectiveness of carbon labels. Using realistic meat packaging designs with high ecological validity, the results show that even a simple and short-form narrative could be effective in enhancing the efficacy of carbon labels. Follow-up studies repeatedly demonstrate that the positive effect of narrative is accentuated by pairing with a gain-framed message. The effect of such a pairing was underpinned by a heightened feeling of certainty regarding the carbon-neutral meat's environmental impact message comprehension. The findings present a simple but often-forgotten notion that consumers seek optimal decisions with minimal cognitive effort. Hence, when given an alternative that is less cognitively demanding (to decode a message), consumers often prefer such a choice as it was reflected by a favourable attitude and heightened intent to purchase.