Facilitating the change to a sustainable diet with a food box service

Abstract

Consumers have an impact on the
sustainability status of our world in many
different ways. In this project the focus lies
on food consumption. Dietary changes are
considered a great opportunity for fighting
climate change, especially through the
reduction of meat consumption (Poore &
Nemecek, 2018).
This graduation project is performed for
Goodcase. The startup aims to accelerate
the shift towards a sustainable diet by
offering sustainable foods directly to the
customer. The goal of this project is to
empower food box customers to switch
their diet to a more sustainable one by
offering a support system that promotes
long-term behaviour change.
Literature research indicated that selfefficacy
and social norms play the main
role when it comes to changing to more
eco-friendly diets (Eker et al., 2019). Lead
users reported that they had initially
increased their self-efficacy to switch to
a new diet by challenging themselves to
perform the new behaviour for a certain
time. Therefore, the design solution
focused on self-experimentation through
self-challenging, paired with the facilitation
of social interaction with other users
online. This combination is also applied in
other behaviour change services, e.g. the
Weight Watchers programme which helps
consumers to eat healthier.
Based on these key insights, the design
brief defined the following design
goal: To increase the self-efficacy of
consumers trying to change to a more
environmentally sustainable diet by
facilitating self-experimentation with a
food box. Following this brief, a productservice
system was designed which
consisted of a food box with products
facilitating vegetarian cooking, a physical
guide that challenged users to reduce
meat consumption, and an online group for
users to motivate each other.
In a subsequent user test, qualitative
research with eight consumers suggested
that the food products triggered
experimentation with vegetarian food which
helped consumers to increase their selfefficacy
to eat less meat. Vegetarian eating
might have been positively influenced by the
meat reduction challenge. However, many
users found it too inconvenient to monitor
themselves daily with the guidebook.
Finally, a second iteration of the design
concept is proposed that incorporates
the key learnings from the user test.
The concept, called EcoEat, combines
a food box with a supportive app which
allows users to monitor and improve their
behaviour over the long term and in a more
convenient way. This design proposal could
be tested in the future.
The main conclusion from this project
is that providing real experiences with
unfamiliar, eco-friendly food products
can positively influence the consumer’s
attitude towards sustainable diets. It can
open them up towards trying out more
food of this kind and thereby helps them
to switch to a more sustainable diet. More
of these opportunities for trial should be
provided to consumers. Food boxes are a
good medium to provide these experiences
regularly. With a complementary behaviour
change service the experimentation with a
sustainable diet can be upheld if the users
are guided in a way that is convenient for
them.