TOWARDS AN INTEGRATED TAILORED FOOD POLICY: Consumer-level mitigation using a hybrid analysis of meat choice and behavioural change

The year 2016 ended with a conclusion for data collection for all the projects assignments. The teams worked on data analysis from their choice experiments and meat consumption trends surveys. The team has written two articles and these have been submitted for review. The Norwegian team made video interviews which will be presented at the end of the project. The two graduate students, a Ph.D. student and a Masters student, recruited for this project will contribute papers towards the project. These two students have not finished their papers but are at an advanced stage of doing so. Both students have participated in an exchange programme to Norway in order to enhance their knowledge of psychology as they are economics students. During the exchange programme, they completed two psychology assignments, participated in the project's main workshop and also administered the pilot study of the psychology questionnaire. From the last quarter of 2016 to date, the students commenced with data analysis under the supervision of the South African team leader. The Norwegian project leader participated in running the four main choice experiments in Denmark in late 2015. The first main choice experiment used traditional interventions, while the second-choice experiment used tailored interventions. The third and fourth choice experiments used the eating and meat environments as a focus in a restaurant and home setting and the final choice experiment utilized equitable interventions. The Norwegian project leader, who was on maternity leave, came back to the project in May 2017 and has successfully completed these choice experiments. The project sought to participate in an international Choice Experiment conference at the beginning of 2017 in Cape Town, South Africa but this did not come to fruition due to inconclusive findings. At the end of the project, all stakeholders will be informed through the dissemination tools- policy manual, articles and presentation of the results of the project. A follow-up report at the end of 2018 and 2019 will be written that will update the Masters and Ph.D. students? progress as well publication of papers currently under review. A dissemination conference will be held at the NRF offices in Pretoria, South Africa on the 4th and 5th December 2017.The purpose of this final conference will be to give and get feedback on the success and challenges of all the nineteen funded SANCOOP projects. Project leaders (or substitutes) together with their research teams which include students will attend this dissemination conference. Expected to also attend this conference are, Associate Professor Beatrice Simo-Kengne; Dr Hiywot Menker Girma; Mr Samson Mukanjari and Dr Dambala Gelo Kutela.

The meat industry is a significant contributor to greenhouse gases and a main cause of climate change. Dietary changes could play an important role in climate change mitigation policies. Exisiting practical measures are not targeted and tailored to the co nsumers. This project contends that we can no longer afford to use reactive stand-alone approaches. Consumers are important here and their individual food choices and habitual dietary changes make a high impact on reducing CO2 emissions. Despite this very little research is available on consumer-level mitigation. How can consumers change if they do not know what to change, how to change and what support is available for their change or what difference they are making with their change on CO2 emissions? Th is project is an attempt at covering the gaps of knowledge in this area.Meat consumption is not easily dealt with purely at a rational level, as eating any food involves social rules, habits, meaning and emotions. Therefore use a hybrid economic-psycholog ical model of meat consumption that recognizes individuals as boundedly rational, emotional, social and moral beings with limited capacity for self-control and subject to habitual behaviors.We will use a four step interdisciplinary approach for the resear ch design where we use a psychological model (CADM) in Step 1 to narrow down the relevant behavioural attributes important for reducing meat consumption and filter the attributes to define/calculate 5 utility values for consumers in Step 2 and then run Ch oice experiments in Step 3 to test various interventions and meat/eating environments sets to in order to provide information to policy makers and stakeholders in Step 4 on which sets of interventions are most effective in reducing meat consumption behavi ours. This is a collaborative project prioritizing a competent and gender balanced research workforce and supporting research and knowledge exchange between Norway and South Africa.