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47 J. Consumer Pol'y 1 (2024)

handle is hein.journals/jrncpy47 and id is 1 raw text is: Journal of Consumer Policy (2024) 47:1-19 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10603-023-09558-3 ORIGINAL PAPER Ethical Considerations When Using Nudges to Reduce Meat Consumption: an Analysis Through the FORGOOD Ethics Framework L. Lades' 1- F. Nova' Received: 4 November 2022 /Accepted: 16 November 2023 /Published online: 14 December 2023 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2023 Abstract Nudges are increasingly used to encourage sustainable and often meat-free diets. Interven- tions to reduce people's meat consumption are motivated by concerns about health, animal welfare, and the environment. However, dietary choices are of personal and cultural sig- nificance, and not everybody wants to be nudged towards a plant-based diet. Nudging has been criticised for being paternalistic, manipulative, and a violation of personal autonomy, amongst other points. It is important to ask whether it is ethical to nudge people towards plant-based diets or whether it is unethical not to do so. Using the FORGOOD ethics framework, this paper organises diverse ethical arguments both in favour and against nudg- ing people towards plant-based diets into seven dimensions: fairness, openness, respect, goals, opinions, options, and delegation. We propose that policymakers, researchers, retail- ers, restaurant managers, and others who design food menus, set food defaults, decide about which labels to use, and design food choice architectures in other ways should use the presented arguments to reflect on whether nudging people towards plant-based diets is ethical. Keywords Meat consumption - Plant-based diets - Nudge - Libertarian paternalism- Ethics - FORGOOD Food production is a major contributor to environmental harm, and it is often argued that changes to our diets are needed (Godfray et al., 2018; Willett et al., 2019). Red meat con- sumption has particularly harmful effects on the environment (Clark et al., 2022). Driven by environmental concerns as well as concerns about animal welfare and health, policy- makers have started considering a multitude of policy instruments to reduce ruminant meat consumption. These instruments include information campaigns, education, labels, manda- tory vegetarian days, meat taxes, and behaviourally informed interventions such as nudges (Bonnet et al., 2020; Funke et al., 2022; Kwasny et al., 2022; Reisch et al., 2021a, 2021b). E L. Lades leonhard.lades @ucd.ie Environmental Policy, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland 2 Geary Institute, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland Springer