Consumers' climate-impact estimations of different food products

In contemporary society, sustainable food production and consumption are increasingly important to mitigate climate change. Food production and consumption result in large greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and thus have a large environmental impact. To positively influence consumers in reducing their food related climate impact, it is important to understand their perception of the climate impacts related to food products. We conducted five online experiments to better understand how laypersons assess the climate impact of various foods. In each experiment, one or two characteristics of the food products were varied to find out whether and how these characteristics affected people's climate-impact estimations. We investigated the influence of different types of meat, protein-rich products, and vegetables with varying production practice, country of origin, transportation mode and seasonality. The results showed that participants were able to correctly order foods' climate impact based on the type of food, its country of origin, its transportation mode and its season, whereas they were less knowledgeable of the extent to which the food products differed in their climate impact. Further, some misconceptions were found: people tended to underestimate the climate impact of organic and national produced meat products and of vegetarian protein-rich products; consumers seemed to rely on the country of origin to estimate the climate impact of vegetable products rather than on their transportation modes; and they did not seem to consider the interaction between seasonality and origin in the climate impact estimations of vegetables. We therefore suggest that better communication with consumers about the climate impact of food products is needed to motivate them to make climate-friendly food choices. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.