How do you design a market that changes how people shop, cook and waste?
Copenhagen's Torvehallerne shows what works. It is a covered market hall deliberately designed as a connection between producer and consumer: the farmers' names are on the stalls, seasonal produce is deliberately not available all year, and people talk to the sellers. The food is not an anonymous product on a shelf; it has a face, a name, a season. And people who shop here regularly buy differently, cook differently, and waste less, not because they were taught to, but because the market replaced abstract knowledge with concrete connection.
The knowledge that does not reach the basket
The conventional response to unsustainable food behaviour is to educate. Run campaigns about sustainable food. Put labels on the packaging. Teach awareness lessons in school. The logic assumes people make poor food choices because they lack knowledge, and that supplying the facts will change the behaviour.
But abstract knowledge about food production has little effect on behaviour, and the supermarket is engineered to keep it that way. In a typical supermarket, food arrives stripped of context: shrink-wrapped, anonymous, available in identical form every day of the year, with no trace of who grew it or when. The facts on a label sit at the level of abstract knowledge, which people process and forget, while the actual experience of shopping, anonymous, frictionless, disconnected, shapes what ends up in the basket. You can know, abstractly, that food has a season and a source, and still shop as though it does not, because the environment offers no connection that would make the knowledge matter. The knowledge never reaches the basket.
Torvehallerne replaces abstract knowledge with concrete connection. By putting the farmers' names on the stalls, letting seasons genuinely shape what is available, and bringing shoppers into conversation with sellers, the market gives food a face, a name and a season, an emotional and concrete connection rather than an abstract fact. And that connection does what the label could not: it changes how people relate to the food, and therefore how they buy, cook and waste it. The shopper who knows the grower, who waited for the season, who talked to the person who made the cheese, treats that food differently, because it is no longer an anonymous product but a connected one.
Why this is design, not willpower
You could read Torvehallerne as a charming market that happens to be good for the planet. But the behavioural lesson is precise: it is about connection replacing information, and the connection is the mechanism.
The market does not motivate people to shop sustainably by informing them about food production. There is no campaign doing the persuading. The changed behaviour comes from the environment creating concrete connection: the named farmer, the real season, the conversation, all of which make the food matter in a way an abstract fact never could. People buy and waste differently not because they were taught to, but because the connection changed their relationship to the food. The behaviour is not exhorted. It is produced by an environment that replaces information with connection.
That is the difference between design and motivation, and with food behaviour it is decisive. Motivation, in the form of education, supplies abstract knowledge that does not reach behaviour. Design creates concrete connection that does, because connection engages people in a way that facts do not. You cannot reliably inform people into caring about their food. You can build an environment that connects them to it, and let the changed behaviour follow.
The wasteful, disconnected shopping was never only about a lack of information. It was about an environment that kept food abstract and anonymous instead of connected and concrete. At SUE, the Influence Framework and SWAC are the methods we teach in the Behavioural Design Fundamentals Course to systematically analyse how placement and salience shape behaviour before any conscious decision is made.
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The principle: psychological distance and food choices
The research underneath this is well established, and naming it turns Torvehallerne from a nice market into a usable principle.[1]
Work on psychological distance and food choices finds that concrete, emotional connection, a face, a name, a story, reduces psychological distance and increases prosocial and sustainable purchasing behaviour. Psychological distance is the gap between us and something abstract, removed, anonymous; the greater the distance, the less it influences our behaviour. An anonymous shrink-wrapped product is psychologically distant, and so it exerts little pull on how carefully we treat it. A named farmer's seasonal produce, by contrast, is psychologically close, concrete and connected, and that closeness makes us treat the food with more care, buying more thoughtfully and wasting less. Closing the distance changes the behaviour.
This is exactly why Torvehallerne outperforms the awareness campaign. The campaign supplies abstract facts, which remain psychologically distant and barely move behaviour. The market creates concrete connection, which closes the psychological distance and changes how people shop, cook and waste. By giving food a face and a season, Torvehallerne does what the label cannot: it brings the food close enough, psychologically, to actually shape behaviour. Reduce the distance, and the behaviour shifts; supply a distant fact, and it does not.
The wasteful relationship with food was never only about ignorance. It was about a psychological distance the environment maintained instead of closing.
It is worth noticing how much modern convenience works in exactly the wrong direction here, because it explains why the problem is so widespread. The whole thrust of the industrialised food system has been to maximise psychological distance: to make food anonymous, available everywhere all year, stripped of season and source and the person who produced it, all in the name of convenience and price. Every one of those improvements, by closing the gap between us and effortless consumption, widened the gap between us and the food itself, and with it our sense of care. Torvehallerne is, in a sense, a deliberate reintroduction of friction and connection that the system spent a century removing. The lesson is not that convenience is bad, but that when you design distance out of the relationship, you design care out of it too, and sometimes the care is worth a little friction to get back.
Learn to apply this yourself
What makes the food market approach effective is that it replaces abstract information with concrete, emotionally connected experience, closing the psychological distance that keeps facts from reaching behaviour. In the Behavioural Design Fundamentals Course, you learn to use the Influence Framework and SWAC to map exactly where that distance is widest in any situation and redesign the environment so the right behaviour becomes the natural response.
View the Behavioural Design Fundamentals CourseWhat you can design this week
You do not need a market hall to apply this. The principle, that closing psychological distance changes behaviour, works wherever abstract information is failing to move people.
Replace information with connection. Abstract facts stay psychologically distant and barely move behaviour. Wherever education is not working, ask how to create concrete, emotional connection, a face, a name, a story, instead of supplying more facts.
Give the abstract a face. A named farmer changes how food is treated; an anonymous product does not. Putting a concrete, human face on something abstract closes the psychological distance and makes it matter.
Let real constraints show. Torvehallerne lets seasons genuinely limit what is available, which connects people to the reality of food. Designing so that real constraints are visible, rather than hidden behind constant availability, deepens the connection.
Close the distance, do not supply the fact. This is the deeper shift. When information is not changing behaviour, the answer is rarely more information. It is to close the psychological distance between people and the thing, so it becomes concrete enough to actually shape what they do.
The thread is the one that runs through everything we do at SUE. You rarely change behaviour by supplying more facts. You change it by closing the psychological distance so the thing becomes concrete and connected. Torvehallerne did not run a campaign about sustainable food. It connected people to their food, and let the connection change the basket.
If you want to learn how to close psychological distance so abstract information becomes behaviour, that is exactly the kind of work our Behavioural Design training is built around.
Frequently asked questions
Why does putting a farmer's name on a market stall change shopping behaviour?
Because it closes what Trope and Liberman call psychological distance. An anonymous shrink-wrapped product is psychologically remote: it has no face, no season, no person attached to it, so it exerts almost no pull on how carefully we treat it. A named farmer's produce is psychologically close, concrete and connected, which makes people treat the food with more care, buy more thoughtfully and waste less. The name is not decoration; it is the mechanism.
What is psychological distance and why does it matter for food choices?
Psychological distance is the gap between us and something abstract, removed or anonymous: the greater the distance, the less influence it has on our behaviour. In Trope and Liberman's construal-level theory, abstract information stays distant and barely moves behaviour, while concrete, emotionally connected experience closes the gap and changes what people actually do. The industrialised food system has systematically maximised this distance, making food anonymous, seasonless and stripped of origin, which is precisely why supplying more facts about that food changes so little.
How do I apply this if I don't run a food market?
Wherever information is failing to move people, ask how you would replace that information with concrete connection. A named face on a product, a real constraint that makes a limit visible, a story that brings the origin close: each of these closes psychological distance and makes abstract facts matter. The question to ask is not "what do people need to know?" but "what would make this concrete enough to actually shape what they do?"
Why don't sustainability labels and food education campaigns work?
They supply abstract facts at a distance. Labels sit at the level of information that people process briefly and then ignore, because the rest of the shopping environment, frictionless, anonymous, constant availability, keeps the psychological distance wide. Education campaigns have the same problem: knowing, abstractly, that food has a season and a source does nothing to close the gap between that knowledge and the basket. What changes behaviour is concrete connection, not more information about something that remains psychologically remote.
If you want to learn how to design for behaviour rather than trying to motivate it, that's exactly what the Behavioural Design Fundamentals Course covers. View upcoming dates →
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