SummaryAttempts to mitigate the environmental impact of oil-palm expansion by improving production standards have been of limited success. An alternative approach aims at a better understanding of the factors that drive consumers to reduce excessive vegetable oil consumption. Our studies focused on consumers’ environmental knowledge as a potential determinant of palm oil consumption. They revealed critical limitations in consumers’ palm oil-related knowledge across different domains, study settings and assessment approaches. The more our participants knew about palm oil and its environmental consequences, the stronger were their reported intentions to reduce their consumption. This relationship was significantly stronger for subjective versus objective palm oil-related knowledge. In addition, we examined whether consumers can be stimulated to consult information about palm oil by making information access the default option. While this simple situational nudge promoted information access, we did not find it to significantly increase actual engagement with the information material. This result suggests that it might be necessary to complement default nudges for information access with other measures to enhance palm oil-related knowledge and to reduce palm oil consumption to more sustainable levels.

中文翻译：

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消费者知识在减少棕榈油需求方面的作用

总结通过提高生产标准来减轻油棕扩张对环境影响的尝试收效甚微。另一种方法旨在更好地了解促使消费者减少过度植物油消费的因素。我们的研究侧重于消费者的环境知识作为棕榈油消费的潜在决定因素。他们揭示了消费者在不同领域、研究环境和评估方法中棕榈油相关知识的严重局限性。我们的参与者对棕榈油及其对环境的影响了解得越多，他们报告的减少消费的意图就越强烈。对于主观与客观的棕榈油相关知识，这种关系明显更强。此外，我们检查了是否可以通过将信息访问作为默认选项来刺激消费者查阅有关棕榈油的信息。虽然这种简单的情境推动促进了信息访问，但我们并没有发现它可以显着增加对信息材料的实际参与。这一结果表明，可能有必要用其他措施来补充信息访问的默认推动，以增强棕榈油相关知识并将棕榈油消费降低到更可持续的水平。