Tailored information helps people progress towards reducing their beef consumption

Abstract

Stage-based theories of behavior change predict that people should have a different need for information in various stages. We tested this assumption in three studies on reduction of beef consumption on Norwegian samples. An information website was developed providing information on why and how to reduce beef consumption. In Study 1 (N=389), user behavior on this website was analyzed depending on the stage of change. It was found that people try to self-tailor the information, but do not fully succeed. In Study 2 (N=869) and Study 3 (N=3508) a randomized field experiment was conducted, comparing the effect of giving access to the section of the website matching the stage, to a control group with no access, a group with access to all information, and a group with a randomly selected stage-mismatched information. The tailored information outperformed the other conditions significantly. For reduction of beef consumption itself, the results were inconclusive.