Consumers opt for vegetarian when supply is greater

If we increased the supply of vegetarian options, would consumers choose vegetarian more often? Three different experiments were conducted by Oxford University scientists to answer this question.

The first experiment, conducted in a university canteen, investigated the effect of changing the ratio of vegetarian to meat meals. Instead of one vegetarian option and two meals with meat, the offer changed to two vegetarian meals and one meal with meat. The result: the number of meals sold with meat fell by 19%.

Experiment two was conducted in 18 different company cafeterias. Here, more vegetarian options were added to the menu. In this experiment, there was a small increase of 2.3% in the number of vegetarian meals.

The final experiment involved a survey of 2,205 adults in the UK. In this study, participants' meal choices were compared from random menus consisting of: (1) one vegetarian and three meat options, (2) two vegetarian and two meat options and (3) three vegetarian and one meat option. The results of this experiment showed a clear increase in the choice of vegetarian food when the percentage of vegetarian options was the highest. 

These studies show that increasing the availability of vegetarian options is effective in reducing meat choice.

Biomedcentral.com