Determinants of Exerciser Environmentalism to Lower Meat Consumption in the Practice of Climate Stewardship

Introduction Animal husbandry for human consumption is a contributing factor of greenhouse gas accumulation. As country-sustainable dietary guidelines recommend, reducing meat overconsumption can substantially mitigate world greenhouse gas emissions. Globally, more than 35 years of evidence indicates a lack of awareness, willingness to alter dietary habits, and disbelief that meat consumption contributes to unwanted climate change.

Six hundred participants (exercisers, n = 300; nonexercisers, n = 300) were sampled randomly from the crowdsourcing database of Prolific and stratified across the age groups of 18–27, 28–37, 38–47, 48–57, and 58–100 with 30 males and 30 females per age group. Differences between exercisers and nonexcercisers were examined for environmental value orientations, beliefs, norms, and intentions related to climate degradation awareness and environmental friendliness in the context of an integrated value belief norm theory (VBN), theory of planned behavior (TPB), and health concern variable (VBNTPB) model.

The results of three VBNTPB causal pathways indicated that exercisers differed significantly from nonexercisers, as compared to the VBN causal pathway, in predicting climate stewardship intention to reduce meat consumption when controlling for the sociodemographic factors of age, ethnicity, and education. Each VBNTPB causal pathway variable was positively and significantly related to the next, confirming an environmentalism pathway originating from biospheric, altruistic, and egoistic environmental value orientations. These values determined general proenvironmental worldview beliefs, which in turn predicted behavior-specific human meat reduction beliefs for awareness of consequences, ascription of responsibility, the moral obligation of personal norm, normative belief of social norm, and the behavioral beliefs of attitude and health concern, to conclude intention of lowering meat consumption to benefit Earth’s climate, and explained 85.4–87.3% of intention variance comparative to 83.2% in the VBN causal pathway. The additional variance explanation via attitude, health concern, and social norm in the VBNTPB model overcame the nonsignificant personal norm prediction of intention in the VBN causal pathway. The common language effect size for each causal regression analysis indicated that exercisers and females would have a higher value on the outcome variable, ranging from 51.37%–72.87% and 50.92%–53.93%, respectively, when holding the values of other predictor variables constant, indicating a large effect size. Exercisers’ current behavior was 100% more likely to consume a low-meat diet than nonexercisers to benefit Earth’s climate (OR = 2.04).

The VBNTPB model is more effective in predicting climate stewardship. The outcomes indicate that individuals who regularly exercise within the range recommended by the U.S. Health and Human Services and the World Health Organization, to sustain the best health, are a worldwide population that society may leverage—to spur social movement in consuming less meat to prevent unwanted climate change. The rational evaluation of the behavioral beliefs of attitude and health concern, and the normative belief of social norm, are important behavioral antecedents that influence physically active individuals to overcome inadequate personal norm to conduct climate stewardship through dietary modification. These antecedents in the context of self-interest should be fostered and reinforced in humankind to promote environmentalism. Sociodemographic trends indicate that these antecedents should be taught throughout an individual’s interest in pursuing higher levels of educational credentials, at an early age, and throughout life’s progression. Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. Funding Statement The study did not receive any funding. Author Declarations I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained. Yes The details of the IRB/oversight body that provided approval or exemption for the research described are given below: Institutional Review Board of A.T. Still University waived (exempt) ethical approval for this work. I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals. Yes I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance). Yes I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines, such as any relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material, if applicable. Yes Data Availability Some data is available and contained within the submission documents.