Meike Janssen

The Plant­Tip pro­ject aims to in­vest­ig­ate so­ci­et­al tip­ping points in con­sumer be­ha­viour in Den­mark, with a fo­cus on ac­cel­er­at­ing the green trans­ition to­wards a sus­tain­able food sys­tem.

The aim of Plant­Tip is to ex­per­i­ment and pre­dict how policy in­stru­ments, mar­ket­ing meas­ures, con­sumer-ori­ented in­nov­a­tions, and so­cial dy­nam­ics can be com­bined to trig­ger so­ci­et­al tip­ping points. The pro­ject em­ploys an in­nov­at­ive ap­proach of de­vel­op­ing (a) agent-based mod­els based on (b) so­cial-be­ha­vi­our­al ex­per­i­ment­a­tion data.

Large-scale and ac­cel­er­ated di­et­ary change could cru­cially con­trib­ute to GHG emis­sion re­duc­tion in Den­mark. How­ever, the cur­rent rate of change to­wards more sus­tain­able di­ets is far too slow and re­stric­ted to niches. So­ci­et­al tip­ping points must be reached to ac­cel­er­ate the needed changes, but we lack know­ledge on how to pre­dict and foster large scale be­ha­viour change.

Cur­rent ap­proaches over­em­phas­ise solu­tions that change food, but not the food-eat­ers. We ar­gue that a com­plex sys­tems change is ne­ces­sary, which this pro­ject ini­ti­ates, by identi­fy­ing ac­tion­able in­sights about in­stru­ments, in­nov­a­tions and so­cial dy­nam­ics that can trig­ger so­ci­et­al tip­ping points.

Plant­Tip is a joint pro­ject of Copen­ha­gen Busi­ness School, Aar­hus Uni­ver­sity and Demo­cracy X, and col­lab­or­ates with, amongst oth­ers, the Stock­holm Re­si­li­ence Centre and the chair of In­ter­na­tion­al Polit­ic­al Eco­nomy and En­vir­on­ment­al Polit­ics, ETH Zurich.

This Ho­ri­zon Europe pro­ject aims to make a dif­fer­ence in food sys­tem trans­itions, by identi­fy­ing what factors un­der­lie the path de­pend­en­cies and ‘lock-ins’ in cur­rent un­sus­tain­able food sys­tems, and show­ing how these can be over­come.

I lead the work pack­age on ‘Value chain ini­ti­at­ives and busi­ness mod­els’ and I am re­spons­ible for gen­er­at­ing con­sumer in­sights on how to pro­mote food from sus­tain­able, cli­mate-neut­ral and biod­iversity-friendly farm­ing sys­tems.

The 4-year pro­ject is fun­ded with 23 mio. DKK (CBS share 2.2 mio. DKK) and in­volves part­ners from 8 European coun­tries.

This large pro­ject fun­ded by In­nov­a­tions­fund Den­mark aimed at fos­ter­ing the trans­ition to­wards more plant-rich di­ets and the avoid­ance of food waste among con­sumers in Den­mark. It is a col­lab­or­a­tion between CBS, Aar­hus Uni­ver­sity, Copen­ha­gen Uni­ver­sity, and more than ten act­ors from the Dan­ish food sec­tor.