Plant-based foods offer great promise for ensuring environmental sustainability. However, encouraging people to replace meat-based meals with plant-based meals is a difficult feat, as people often perceive meat consumption as socially normal, evolutionarily natural, and satisfying in taste. In the current research, we tested a subtle strategy for changing eating behavior. Through a 10-week field experiment, we investigated how different frames for vegetarian and vegan menu items influence consumer behavior in a real-world setting. We randomly varied whether vegetarian and vegan items on a restaurant's menu were referred to as “vegetarian” and “vegan” vs. “plant-based.” Throughout the experiment, we tracked 167,637 consumer decisions. Items were 24% more likely to sell when they were marketed as vegetarian/vegan than when they were marketed as plant-based. These findings highlight the potential for frames to promote plant-based food choices, offering a subtle strategy for changing consumer behavior and supporting sustainability efforts.

植物性食品为确保环境的可持续性提供了巨大的希望。然而，鼓励人们用植物性膳食代替肉类膳食是一项艰巨的壮举，因为人们通常认为肉类消费是社会正常的、进化上的自然且口味令人满意。在当前的研究中，我们测试了一种改变饮食行为的微妙策略。通过为期 10 周的实地实验，我们调查了素食和纯素菜单项的不同框架如何影响现实世界环境中的消费者行为。我们随机改变餐厅菜单上的素食和纯素食项目是否被称为“素食”和“纯素食”与“以植物为基础”。在整个实验过程中，我们跟踪了 167,637 个消费者决策。以素食/纯素形式销售的商品比以植物为基础的商品销售的可能性高 24%。这些发现强调了框架在促进植物性食品选择方面的潜力，为改变消费者行为和支持可持续发展努力提供了微妙的策略。