Objectives: The study’s main goal was to investigate the effect of ego depletion
on explicit and implicit attitudes and behavior toward sustainable food
consumption in the context of dual-process models describing sustainable
behavior.
Methods: 171 student participants completed an explicit rating and an affective
priming task, respectively, at pre- and post-intervention, namely a six-minute
transcription task to induce ego depletion. They then conducted a decisionmaking
task (sustainable vs. less-sustainable chocolate bar) to test sustainable
behavior during ego depletion.
Results: Contrary to our hypotheses, explicit attitudes toward sustainable
nutrition remained stable across conditions, showing no significant decline
in the depletion group. Unexpectedly, implicit attitudes toward sustainable
vegetarian nutrition became more negative over time, irrespective of the
experimental condition. In the decision-making task, participants’ behavior was
primarily predicted by their explicit attitudes post-intervention, rather than their
implicit attitudes or ego depletion state.
Conclusion: These findings challenge the assumption that ego depletion
weakens explicit attitudes toward sustainable behavior, particularly vegetarian
nutrition. Instead, explicit attitudes appear to be stable and the predominant
predictor of sustainable food choices.