NEWS & INSIGHT
PATH TO REDUCING RESTAURANTS’ CARBON FOOTPRINT SHOWN IN ON-CAMPUS TRIAL SCHOOL : HEC Paris COUNTRY : France
Adjusting the prices of meals according to their carbon footprint could help reduce a restaurant’s environmental impact, according to an HEC Paris study. In a field experiment conducted at HEC Paris’ cafeteria, the establishment’s carbon footprint was reduced by an average of 27 per cent when the prices of dishes with a low-carbon footprint were made slightly cheaper than high-footprint items. A larger price change, meanwhile, yielded a drop of 42 per cent. This initiative was the most effective of three policies carried out in the study, which ran between August 2021 and mid-June 2023, encompassing data from more than 4,000 consumers and close to 140,000 meals. The alternative measures included banning food with a high carbon footprint one day a week and displaying information about a meal’s footprint at the point of sale. While the occasional ban reduced the cafeteria’s carbon footprint by 10 per cent, listing information yielded no significant impact at all. “Any meaningful reduction in the carbon impact of the meals consumed means you have to make the low-carbon option less expensive than the carbon-intensive alternative. Giving customers information wasn’t enough
in itself to produce a positive effect,” explained HEC Paris professor of finance Stefano Lovo, who co-authored the study with PhD candidate Yurii Handziuk. A follow-up survey conducted from December 2023 to March 2024 presented cafeteria users with the findings and asked them to choose whether or not they would like to opt for one of the three measures introduced during the experiment. Among 864 respondents, 60 per cent voted for adjusting the pricing of meals, 30 per cent opted for an intermittent ban on high-footprint meals, 6.5 per cent preferred displaying each dish’s carbon footprint and 3.5 per cent wanted to do nothing. “We can draw two promising conclusions from the study,” added Lovo. “First: the ‘green’ option only needs to be a little bit cheaper than the ‘brown’ to bring the cafeteria’s emissions down by a quarter. Secondly, this pricing policy would be widely accepted by staff and students.” TBD
SHARE YOUR NEWS AND RESEARCH UPDATES by emailing AMBA & BGA content editor Tim Banerjee Dhoul at t.dhoul@amba-bga.com
Ambition | DECEMBER 2024 | 11
Made with FlippingBook - Share PDF online