Consumer perspectives on reducing meat consumption: Why recommendations often fail to induce behaviour change?

In food systems, sustainability is regarded as a major challenge that need to be addressed in order to produce the desired outcomes related to environment, food security, and economic and social well-being of people. Consumers making changes in their food choices have been regarded as the major actors in achieving the required transformations, because consumption is one of the drivers of food systems. However, putting consumers' food choices in the central position in driving the change tends to undermine the roles of other actors and drivers. Consumers need to change their behaviour but to enable the changes, they need support from other actors. Food-related behaviours are complex as they are influenced by physiology, environment, social factors and culture, but still the decisions are made with little effort as part of established household routines and habits. Household food provisioning systems and the role of diverse types of decisions made during the provisioning process have gained limited attention in studies in comparison to the choice and purchase decisions, although they may be the bottlenecks hampering the desired changes in the purchase decisions. Meat reduction is an interesting behaviour because it targets culturally highly valued central piece in meals that in public recommendations is demoted to become a part of diet that should be restricted for health and sustainability reasons. Consumers' role and responsibility in making changes in their food-related behaviour will be discussed in relation to household food provisioning processes and roles of other food system actors in enabling and supporting those changes.