Sustainable Dining Through Menu Design

Did you know that food consumption makes up a huge part of tourism’s carbon footprint?

Researchers from the University of Surrey and Copenhagen Business School wanted to find simple

ways hotels can encourage guests to make more sustainable food choices. In this study,

two hotels tested different menu designs to see what made guests more likely to order vegetarian

dishes. Over 600 guests took part—without even knowing they were part of an

experiment. One menu used a cognitive approach, known as the bandwagon effect,

by adding a sentence like “85% of our guests choose vegetarian dishes.” The other menus used behavioural

interventions, changing how the menu was presented. Vegetarian dishes were shown first