The role of culture in the effectiveness of environmental appeals to reduce unsustainable meat consumption

Considering meat consumption's massive impact on climate change, environmental NGOs are increasingly campaigning to encourage consumers to reduce unsustainable meat consumption, i.e., to eat less and/or better meat. They usually use messages based on environmental appeals to do so. Yet, the effectiveness of such appeals in international campaigns may depend on countries as cultural beliefs influence food consumption behaviors. Therefore, in this research, we explore the effectiveness of such campaigns across 5 European countries, controlling for individual cultural orientations. Considering an environmental degradation appeal, we first show that countries have no influence on the campaign's effectiveness, unlike specific individual cultural orientations, including masculinity and uncertainty avoidance. We replicate these results in the same 5 countries considering an alternative appeal, i.e., animal welfare. Recommendations to international NGOs managers result from these results.