Vegetarianism in Sustainability of Our Planet - Research Paper Example

 Vegetarianism in sustainability of our planet Abstract The aim of this paper is to identify the extent to which vegetarianism has an effect to the sustainability of our planet since meat consumption is one of the major contributors to human made environmental destruction including climate change. Other effects include biodiversity loss or water and air pollution and at the same time under volitional control meat consumption is an interesting target for interventions for the benefit of general human health. The paper designed an integrated model derived from planned human behaviour as well as other theories to confirm the hypothesis. Data was collected from the ground using questionnaires administered to a sample of respondents and findings drawn by use of correlation matrix. This confirmed the model to a large extent that vegetarianism habits are more likely to be influenced by health aspects as compared to environmental concerns. Though, this will reduce the meat consumption and have a further beneficial effect to the sustainability of the environment. The study was based on a convenience sample to get the necessary data that was further supplemented with secondary data from journals and already conducted research works. The results show that interventions to encourage vegetarianism need to have a bigger environmental picture for it to be effective in the sustainability of the planet. Introduction Human activities impact the environment in considerably both adverse and positive ways in various ways. The negative effects to the environment can come in the form of global warming, biodiversity loss, water depletion and water pollution, air pollution, land degradation, deforestation, ozone layer depletion, and many more observed all over the world. Hertwich (2005, p 4677) argues that household consumption is the most important contributor of human related emissions that come out in form of sewage and polluted water. The environment is impacted by factors such as food, housing and transport as the most significant, accounted responsibility for more than 70 per cent of the total lifecycle impacts of all products and services used for household and government, (Tukker & Jansen (2006, p 160) Jungbluth, Tietje & Scholz, (2000, p 137) argue that individuals have the possibility to reduce environmental impacts by changing their behaviour patterns; this has particularly more to do with revising their food choices which introduces the idea of vegetarianism. Within the category of food, the most dominant contributors were meat and dairy products which have an adverse effect to the environment; vegetarianism - meat consumption has a major impact on the environment (FAO, 2006). Meat eating is a voluntary behaviour and might as such have a high potential for a change among individuals who have the environment best interests at heart; it might represent a much wider group of behaviours in which individuals’ preferences result in environmental consequences. Meat consumption is a substantial contribution to an individuals’ environmental footprint; although this is so, studies focussing on the determinants of its reduction are surprisingly scarce and little is known about the motivational factors and the relevant barriers. Environmentally friendly living has often been studied in terms of how to enable lifestyle and behaviour change in the direction towards a sustainable planet. Research and development has been focusing on the importance of various social practices in everyday life that will bring about a change towards environmental conservation behaviours for the future generation (Hargreaves, 2011, p 79; Shove, 2012, p 19). Choices regarding environmentally friendly living and the practices surrounding and making them possible are in the present framed as a type of life politics (Giddens, 1991, p 42) due to the movements spearheading the changes. Such movements have been labelled ‘green movements’ and are instrumental all over the world as the leading environmentalists. Other behaviour change aspects enhanced are not buying out-of season or non-organic produce, not travelling by plane and so forth. The role of such movements involve passing information in achieving change to enable people know about the environment and about the likely consequences of certain actions (Bartiaux, 2008, p 1176; Haider, 2011, p 825; Hobson, 2003, p 103; Shove, 2005, p 111). Literature review There are various reasons which may make meat consumers want to reduce their meat consumption which are moral considerations, health aspects and environmental impacts. Human and animal rights are among the moral reasons that some may want to restrain from eating meat as for other people moral question rises due to the in-obligatory choice of people to consume products that involve animal exploitation (Wiliams, 2008, p 378). Over 63.3 billion animals are slaughtered for the meat industry annually (FAO, 2012) as on the other hand human rights are mainly considered for the contribution of meat consumption to world hunger. Considering if livestock feeds that are edible to humans were consumed by humans and not by livestock, they would increase the amount of available nutrients to a greater amount of people (Pimentel & Pimentel, 2003, p 6609). The other reason for not consuming meat would be health issues relating to the association of meat intake with various illnesses, such as some forms of cancer. Conditions too, such as heart diseases, rheumatism, Crohn disease, nutritional deficiency, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and avian or swine influenza can result from this behaviour, (Barnard, Nicholson & Howard, 1995, p 653). However, a lower health risk might not only be attributed to lower meat consumption but also to the higher consumption of plant-based foods for their nutritional benefits; these include antioxidant substances, unsaturated fats, dietary fibres that may reduce risks of heart diseases and cancer, and lower cholesterol levels (Fraser, 1999, p 5371). It was not right to have meat free meals due to the deficiencies that would be associated with such and the benefits of meat diets are now being observed. Environmental impacts are strongly related to meat consumption and from a report published by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), meat consumption has a big impact on the livestock industry, meat industry and environmental degradation. The report stated that the livestock sector is one of the top contributors to the most serious environmental problems as the United Nations Environmental Program further stated that animal products, especially meat and dairy products require more resources and generate higher emissions than plant-based foods. Environmental effects as a result of meat consumption can be assessed from various perspectives that include land use, climate change, atmospheric emissions, water depletion and biodiversity. Looking at land use, the livestock sector accounts for about three quarters of all agricultural land, which further accounts for thirty per cent of the earth’s land surface, (FAO, 2006). Grazing and taking away crop land can be said as the largest adverse effects in this category, which can generate changes in soil physical properties that affect water movement and sediments capture. This has the effect of causing soil erosion and the loss of its nutrients (Mysterud, 2006, p 136), which also involve substantial clearing of tropical forests (FAO, 2006) for the purpose of creating more land. From the climate change and atmospheric emissions perspective, (FAO, 2006, p 272) concludes that the sector is responsible for a fifth of the anthropogenic GHG emissions which is a higher share than the share of the whole global transport sector. Gasses from this procedure account for 64 per cent of anthropogenic ammonia hence a severe potential for ecosystem pollution total, the livestock sector accounts for 35-40 per cent of global anthropogenic emissions and more estimations indicate a higher emission contribution which reaches as high as 51 per cent GHGs to the livestock industry. Excess amount of water is required for meat and dairy production and hence resulting to ware depletion and pollution as more livestock contribute to other water problems such as dead zones in coastal areas and degradation of coral reefs. This is mainly polluted through animal wastes, use of antibiotics, hormones, fertilizers and pesticides in the various processes that involve the growth of livestock. The effects to biodiversity loss can be examined in the contexts of its main threats that include habit changes. This is accompanied by resources overexploitation, the migration and spread of invasive species and diseases, nutrient loading and climate change; compared to a plant based diet, the latter is more efficient from all the above impact categories (Reijnders & Soret, 2003, p 6646). Psychological theories of environmental behaviour The vegetarian tendencies have a lot to do with individual behaviour and control; this is why psychological behaviour theories have been chosen as the concepts to identify key issues in this subject. Vegetarianism can be as a result of the three motivations that were outlined above and may hence have an effect in reducing the meat consumption levels, (Schwartz, 1977, p 236). The theory of planned behaviour assigns intention as the immediate determinant of volitional behaviour; generated by the attitude toward the behaviour, subjective norm, and perceived behavioural control. Attitudes refer to a personal evaluation of the behaviour in question as more or less favourable; subjective norms refer to the perceived expectations of other people as Thøgersen (2006, p 254) asserts that injunctive norms represent other’s expectations of one’s behaviour, while descriptive norms are simple representation of what others do; perceived behavioural control is the extent to which one believes to be able to perform behaviour (Ajzen, 2012, p 438). The norm activation theory according to Schwartz’s (1977, p 238) focuses explicitly on the moral and normative dimensions of human behaviour and includes variables such as personal norms, awareness of consequences and ascription of responsibility. Personal norms relate to the sense of moral duty to do or not do something, knowledge of results and ascription of responsibility, which relates to the feelings of responsibility for negative penalties of not acting (De Groot & De Steg, 2009, p 432). Personal norms refer to a person’s own views about right and wrong; in difference from subjective norms, consequences of either their defending or violating are tied to one’s self-concept, and not to one’s perceived social concept (Arvola et al., 2008, p 444) The protection motivation theory as developed by Rogers (1975, p 14) formulates the effects of threatening health information on attitude and behaviour change where its fundamental assumption is that the cognitive appraisal of an event as both harmful and likely to occur, together with a belief in a suggested behaviour that can prevent the harmful event effectively, can generate protection motivation. The main components of the theory are perceived severity, which refers to the one’s belief regarding the seriousness of the threat’s consequences to one’s life. The other is perceived vulnerability, which measures how personally sensitive an individual feels to the communicated threat; lastly is perceived response efficacy which refers to beliefs about the effectiveness of the recommended coping response in reducing threats to the individual and avoiding the negative consequences. An integrated model All three theories introduced above focus on different aspects that may all be relevant for the decision to reduce meat consumption and to a varying degree people might want to reduce their intake of meat because they feel the pressure of others. This pressure makes them develop negative attitudes towards meat consumption, because they feel a moral obligation or because they want to reduce a health threat that they perceive as being connected to meat consumption. Moral and normative influences are supposed to be indirect and following their structure it is assumed that vegetarian behaviour is directly predicted by meat eating habits, because eating patterns are highly repetitive and thus most likely a routine. Another direct predictor should be the intention to reduce meat consumption and finally, planned behaviour change may have a direct impact on meat consumption. Intentions to reduce meat consumption should be directly predicted by attitudes towards a diet with less or no meat, planned behaviour change, moral beliefs and health beliefs; which were considered as an additional predictor of intentions, because health related aspects might have an independent influence. Following Klo¨ckner and Blo¨baum’s (2010, p 581) finding that social norms influence intentions indirectly only when personal norms are included in the model, injunctive and descriptive norms were assumed to impact moral beliefs, but not intentions directly as lastly meat eating habits should be related to intentions and moral beliefs. Methodology Data were collected by approaching a convenience sample of individuals and asking for their participation in the paper-pencil questionnaire and for easy sampling the researcher approached a university due to its technological environments. The authors are aware of the bias that has been caused by the method of data collection but generating a more representative sample of participants. Since it was at the time of Norwegian winter, approaching random individuals outside was not an option, and indoor facilities had to be chosen and in order to acquire as varied a sample as possible, data collection took place in various locations in the city. Respondents were chosen from two university campuses where both students and staff members were approached, the public library, coffee shops, restaurants, offices and social gatherings that were encountered by chance. About a third of the sample was collected outside the campus area and on average, filling the questionnaire took 10-15 minutes. The sample in this study consisted of 210 participants where the overall, participant’s age distribution was 15-59, the mean age was 25 years, the standard deviation 5.6. About 56.7 per cent of the participants were females, 40.5 per cent males and 2.9 per cent did not wish to specify one of the above; 4.8 per cent were vegetarians while 85.1 per cent consumed meat at least once a week. Results and data analysis A questionnaire was developed based on the application of the above three theories and variables generated and as the questionnaire was piloted, items were reworded where ambiguities occurred. Variables identified – intention and behaviour items - were answered on a seven scale where 1 meant complete disagreement and 7 complete agreement, except for the descriptive norm. Mean scores were calculated and reliability checked with Croncbach’s alpha and the results are as shown in the table below: - Table I. Descriptive statistics for all model constructs Number of items M SD Cronbach’s alpha Injunctive norms Descriptive norms Perceived behavioural control Moral beliefs Health beliefs Attitudes Vegetarian habits 4 2 4 5 2 1 3 2.49 4.9 4.83 4.52 4.50 4.89 4.76 1.20 6.61 1.07 1.01 1.28 1.58 1.50 0.67 0.69 0.62 0.71 0.52 - 0.76 Further, a correlation matrix was developed where descriptive norm was measured by asking for the number of vegetarians and people reducing their meat consumption that were known to the participants. Vegetarian behaviour was measured on a frequency scale, using an ordinal scale (0 = never [4.8 per cent of the sample], 1 = rarely [0.5 per cent], 2 = on special occasions only [0.5 per cent], 3 = sometimes [9.1 per cent], 4 = one or more times a week [48.6 per cent], 5 = daily [36.5 per cent]), reduction intentions were also measured on an ordinal scale (0 = no intention to reduce [57.8 per cent of the sample], 1 = intention to reduce meat consumption to special occasions only [17.2 per cent], 2 = intention to avoid the consumption of specific types of meat [12.7 per cent], 3 = intention to become vegetarian [7.8 per cent], 4 = intention to become vegan [4.4 per cent]) Table II Correlation matrix of the model constructs IN DN PBC MB HB ATT HAB INT Injunctive norms (IN) Descriptive norms (DN) Perceived behavioural control (PBC) Moral beliefs (MB) Health beliefs (HB) Attitudes (ATT) Vegetarian habits (HAB) Intention (INT) Behaviour (BEH) -0.10 -0.09 -0.21 -0.16 0.18 -0.09 0.15 0.24 0.37 -0.02 0.38 -0.34 0.36 -0.24 0.34 0.15 0.41 -024 0.42 -0.35 0.31 0.53 -0.38 0.58 -0.35 0.29 0.34 -0.20 0.45 -0.31 -0.52 0.65 -0.45 -0.47 0.62 -0.52 The test model received an acceptable model fit where (Chi2 = 5.0215, df = 18, p < 0.001; Chi2 / df ratio = 2.79; CFI = 0.90; RMSEA = 0.092 [ CI 0.063 0.123]; WRMR = 0.893) and hence an indication that all model fit indices but RMSEA are within the acceptable range (Hu & Bentler, 1999, p 43); signifying that vegetarian tendencies were directly predicted by meat eating habits and negatively by intentions to reduce and hence a favourable sustainability to our planet. Moral beliefs were predicted by descriptive norms, perceived behavioural control, health aspects and injunctive norms, 46 per cent of the difference in moral issues was as a result of aforementioned variables. Vegetarian habits were impacted by moral principles and intentions which explain 29 per cent of its disparity, moral beliefs and approaches presented a significant overlap which echoes in the sturdy regression weight and that 50 per cent of deviation in attitudes was explained by moral beliefs Discussion Habits were the most important predictors of vegetarianism which underlines that automatic processes are very important in everyday consumption. However, reduction intentions also have a relevant impact, which means that under certain conditions it seems possible to overrule diet habits if the individual is willing to put an effort into a dietary change. As expected, intentions were impacted by attitudes, but also health beliefs and moral beliefs; this confirms our assumption that vegetarianism and meat consumption reduction intentions can be driven by moral facets, health traits and other attitudes. As far as moral drive for vegetarianism is concerned, the data reveals that this is not as much of a drive as health and habits. Hence, the vegetarian tendencies may have an impact on the environment conservation but the initial intention was rather individual health benefits. Hence it is difficult to measure the real impact to the sustainability of the planet due to its minimal relation to vegetarianism and the strong overlap with moral beliefs, which underlines the importance of moral aspects in the decision. Environmental and animal rights issues had a strong influence on attitudes towards organic food as they also found a significant relation between attitude and intention, and a significant relation between the three ethical value dimensions of ecological, political and religious motives, and attitudes, (Honkanen, Verplanken & Olsen, 2006, p 422) The findings of the study have important implications for tailoring interventions aimed at advocating for vegetarian tendencies by identifying habits, health beliefs, moral beliefs, attitudes, social norms and perceived behavioural control as relevant aspects in the decision making in response to environment sustainability. 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