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This paper aims to highlight the position of meat reduction in what EU consumers think "eating a healthy and sustainable diet" involves and who has a role to play in achieving food system change. The data are based on the Eurobarometer 93.2 survey (mid 2020). The participants were asked to make their own selections out of a variety of food-related items and actors, linked to meat ("Eating meat less often") and other aspects of diets ("Eating more fruit and vegetables"). Their responses were analyzed separately in two EU regions: Northwest Europe—consisting of the 10 richest EU countries with the highest scores on economic and social sustainable development indicators— and the East and the South. Three principal components of dietary thinking were distinguished, relating to 1) nutrition issues, 2) easy "light green" issues and 3) more demanding "deeper green" issues, respectively. The analysis also distinguished three types of actors in the value chain (food chain actors, supporting actors, and governmental actors). In Northwestern Europe, a majority of consumers saw a role for themselves in making the food system more sustainable and a large minority saw meat reduction as part of a healthy and sustainable diet. Both responses were much less common in the East and South. In the Northwest, meat reduction was relatively strongly related to "deeper green" thinking but also weakly to nutrition-focused thinking, whereas the opposite was found in the East and South. However, meat reduction had no prominent position in their considerations. For policy-makers, therefore, it is crucial that both nutrition and environment can be motivating factors for consumers to consider meat reduction, albeit to different degrees.

Using data from Eurobarometer 83.4, this study combines the two branches of research that address climate-related and biodiversity-related opinions and actions of individuals in the EU. The literature shows that the differences between climate-related and biodiversity-related policies correspond, at an individual level, to a person's basic attitudes towards environmental protection and towards nature protection, respectively. The contribution of this study is to demonstrate how these attitudes can influence behavior that has environmental repercussions for both issues, such as food consumption practices. The analysis focused on two Eurobarometer questions about buying local and seasonal food (to fight climate change) and about buying organic and local food (to protect biodiversity and nature). The results of two multinomial regression analyses, separately in Northwestern European countries and Eastern and Southern European countries, demonstrated that climate-related and biodiversity-related attitudes were, independent of each other, related to the adoption of these purchase behaviors. The results may support Europe's new Farm to Fork (F2F) strategy and indicate that improving food consumption practices can enable individuals to better play their part in fighting climate change and biodiversity loss simultaneously, which opens up interesting new perspectives for policymakers, businesses and consumers.

This study explored whether EU's new Farm to Fork strategy (F2F)—which aims to tackle climate change, protect the environment and preserve biodiversity in the pursuit of more sustainable food practices—moves in a direction that matches consumer concerns about global issues. A key point is that the traditional differences between the policy approaches related to climate change mitigation and to biodiversity protection, respectively, correspond to differences between environment-based and nature-based attitudes at an individual level. Data from Eurobarometer 92.4 (2019) provided a set of environmental concerns and two food-related pro-environmental actions (buying local products and making a diet change to more sustainable food). Consumer responses to the latter option were assumed to indicate steps in parallel with F2F. Two multinomial regression analyses were carried out separately in Northwestern European countries, and in Eastern and Southern European countries. In both analyses, climate change and species decline were distinct sources of consumer concern, which were—independent of one another—more strongly related to reporting both options than to one option only. It was concluded that the F2F policy is in line with consumer concerns about environment and nature and that this may create important new perspectives for policymakers, businesses and consumers.

This study provides insight into differences and similarities in the mindset and motivation of four dietary groups (young self-declared vegetarians, low, medium and high meat-eaters) to support the development of strategies for a general transition to a less meat-based diet. The paper highlights the value of the identity concept for our understanding of both vegetarians and meat eaters. The analysis involves a comparison of the four dietary groups focusing on the strength and the profile of their food-related motivation and their reasons for and against frequent meat eating. To check for the generalizability of the results, the analyses were performed in two samples of adults (aged 18-35) in the Netherlands (native Dutch, n = 357, and second generation Chinese Dutch, n = 350). In both samples, the vegetarians had the same level of food-related motivation as the other groups, but a different motivational profile and distinctive, taste- and animal-welfare related reasons to justify their abstinence from eating meat. The low and medium meat-eaters often considered health a reason to eat meat as well as to moderate meat eating, plus they liked to vary their meals. In these aspects they were different from both the vegetarians and the high meat-eaters. The findings are relevant for (non) governmental organizations that aim to influence dietary choices, as well as for businesses that operate in the market of meat substitutes.

This article examines the extent and manner to which evaluations of flood‐related precautions are affected by an individual's motivation and perception of context. It argues that the relationship between risk perception and flood risk preparedness can be fruitfully specified in terms of vulnerability and efficacy if these concepts are put into the perspective of prevention‐focused motivation. This relationship was empirically examined in a risk communication experiment in a delta area of the Netherlands (n = 1,887). Prevention‐focused motivation was induced by contextualized risk information. The results showed that prevention‐focused individuals were more sensitive to the relevance of potential precautions for satisfying their needs in the context they found themselves in. The needs included, but were not limited to, fear reduction. Due to the heterogeneity of the residents, the evaluations reflected individual differences in the intensity and the selectivity of precautionary processes. Four types of persons could be distinguished according to their evaluation of precautionary measures: a high‐scoring minority, two more selective types, and a low‐scoring minority. For policymakers and risk communicators it is vital to consider the nature of prevention motivation and the context in which it is likely to be high.

This article proposes an approach to flood risk communication that gives particular emphasis to the distinction between prevention and promotion motivation. According to E. Tory Higgins, the promotion system and the prevention system are assumed to coexist in every person, but one or the other may be temporarily or chronically more accessible. These insights have far‐reaching implications for our understanding of people's reasoning about risks. Flood risk communication framed in terms of prevention involves the notions of chance and harm, woven into a story about particular events that necessitate decisions to be more careful about safety issues and protect one's family and oneself from danger. The article describes how the insights worked out in practice, using a flood risk communication experiment among a sample from the general population in a highly populated river delta of the Netherlands. It had a posttest‐only control group design (n = 2,302). The results showed that risk communication had a large effect on the participants' responses and that this effect was higher among chronic prevention‐focused people than among others. Any information that increased the fit between a prevention‐framed message and a person's chronic prevention motivation produced stronger situationally induced, prevention‐focused responses. This may significantly improve communication about risks. In contrast, the notion of water city projects, featuring waterside living, had more appeal to promotion‐focused people.

Implementation of article 8.1 of the EC‐"Seveso" Directive (82/501/EC) is now under way in many countries in Europe. In The Netherlands, the implementation of the Directive started with a carefully monitored introduction of active information provision at two sites (Dordrecht and Elst). This introduction was supported by a multidisciplinary research group. This group helped to develop the risk communication program and also played a role in the evaluation of the program. This paper describes these processes and their evaluation. We will focus on the design of the risk communication programs and the effects of the programs on knowledge and attitudes of the local target groups. This effort and its results clearly started an institutional learning process involving governmental bodies at several organizational levels (local, regional, and national), and industrial organizations (individual firms and organizations of industries). Monitoring the design, the implementation, and the effects of active information provision proves an effective means to gain experience with the implementation of the Seveso Directive and could help to facilitate further implementation.