The global food system has a large impact on the environment. By converting household grocery purchases into environmental cost factors like greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and land use, this study examines the sustainability of food purchases over a 10-year period using household panel data in two pro-sustainability markets (Germany and the Netherlands). The environmental intensity of households’ grocery baskets has not declined over time in these countries. Even though younger and more educated households are starting to shift their diets, the share of plant-based alternatives in food diets remains very low. The authors propose that one contributing factor is a lack of environmental knowledge, which they address by developing an app that gives personalized feedback on the emissions associated with consumers’ food purchases. The app also allows users to create sustainable grocery bundles aligned with their dietary preferences. Two experiments demonstrate that interacting with the app (1) raises subjective and objective environmental knowledge related to food, with much of this improvement persisting for over six months, and (2) reduces GHG emissions associated with stated food choices by up to 33%. These reductions are driven by different information formats within the app, including peer-comparisons and detailed information about food-category emissions.

中文翻译：

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EXPRESS：缩小知识差距：了解和减少食品选择对环境的影响

全球食品系统对环境有很大影响。通过将家庭杂货购买转化为温室气体 （GHG） 排放和土地使用等环境成本因素，本研究使用两个支持可持续发展的市场（德国和荷兰）的家庭面板数据检查了 10 年期间食品购买的可持续性。在这些国家，家庭购物篮的环境强度并没有随着时间的推移而下降。尽管年轻和受教育程度更高的家庭开始改变他们的饮食，但植物性替代品在食品饮食中的份额仍然很低。作者提出，一个促成因素是缺乏环境知识，他们通过开发一款应用程序来解决这一问题，该应用程序可以提供有关消费者购买食品的排放量的个性化反馈。该应用程序还允许用户创建符合其饮食偏好的可持续杂货包。两项实验表明，与应用程序交互 （1） 提高了与食物相关的主观和客观环境知识，其中大部分改进持续了六个月以上，并且 （2） 将与所述食物选择相关的温室气体排放量减少了高达 33%。这些减排是由应用程序中的不同信息格式推动的，包括同行比较和有关食品类别排放的详细信息。