Eating more plant-based food with a low carbon footprint instead of animal-based food with a high carbon footprint is beneficial for both the environment and for humans (Fesenfeld et al., 2023). However, it has not yet been investigated how in humans the motivation for such universal human-environment interaction can be established. This would require examining if plant-based food choice is reinforced by the associative learning that choosing plant-based in contrast to animal-based food is positively affecting both one’s body and environment.
We have therefore developed a beyond the state-of-the-art immersive 3D virtual environment for this purpose, named EcoWalk. By physically walking across the virtual environment on the omnidirectional treadmill of Infinadeck, one can experience that choosing animal-based food results in negative changes of both one’s environment and one’s body — and that replacing this food with plant-based food results in the simultaneous positive reversal of these alterations.
We are currently investigating scientifically whether EcoWalk can serve to foster the learning of eco-friendly and healthy food choice, and how a low-cost version of EcoWalk can be used in daily practice.
This project is a cooperation with Dr. Aline Stämpfli from the research group for Human Nutrition, Sensory Analysis and Flavour of Agroscope.
Literature:
Fesenfeld, L., Mann, S., Meier, M., et al. (2023). Wege in die Ernährungszukunft der Schweiz. SDSN Schweiz. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7543576
Related publication:
Dobricki, M., Rihs, M. & Shahmoradi, S. (2025). Learning eco-friendly food choice using extended reality – an exploratory investigation. Frontiers in Virtual Reality, 6:1498770.
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