Essays on (Un)sustainable Consumer Behavior: The Context of Grocery Retailing, Food Consumption and Travel

This dissertation explores several questions, each tied to some of the world’s most urgent and complex challenges, by unraveling consumer decision-making in three crucial contexts.
The first essay addresses the global health crisis and obesity pandemic, which are closely linked to dietary choices. Given that grocery shopping heavily influences food consumption, this study develops a theoretical framework for "nudge" interventions—subtle changes to the choice environment that encourage healthier choices. It identifies where, why, and how such nudges work in the grocery store by dissecting the choice architecture of the grocery-retailing environment, elaborating on the concept of retail convenience, and introducing the novel concepts of swayer and nayer nudges. This framework provides a practical tool for researchers, policymakers, and retailers to design and test effective interventions.
The second essay focusses on the environmental impact of the airline industry and examines specifically how carbon offsetting schemes influence travel behavior. Through an online experiment, it investigates whether voluntary carbon offsets—as opposed to integrated, involuntary ones—affect consumers' likelihood of choosing sustainable transport in the future. While the results indicate that offering consumers the choice to offset emissions may influence future sustainable travel behavior, the study does not find evidence of a moral licensing or cleansing effect. These findings shed light on the role of choice design—such as voluntary versus integrated carbon offsets—as well as the potential psychological mechanisms underlying such decisions.
The third essay explores the environmental impact of meat production and consumption, focusing on how consumers’ moral foundations shape their dietary choices. While individualizing moral foundations strongly correlate with diverse motivations to reduce meat consumption, they do not necessarily translate into action. Notably, binding moral foundations are linked to higher meat consumption and a weaker motivation to reduce intake for environmental or animal welfare reasons. This is noteworthy, as these motives are conventionally among the most widely used persuasion tactics by marketers and policymakers to encourage meat reduction.
Taken together, these results extend the existing literature on sustainable consumer behavior, highlighting important but previously overlooked facets. By offering valuable insights into how both the surrounding environment and psychological factors shape consumers' decisions on when and where to act sustainably—or not—these essays provide a strong foundation for more effective policies and interventions to promote sustainable behavior.