Awareness–Action and Policy Acceptability in Mitigating Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Key Stakeholders in Germany's Cattle Dairy and Meat Chains

This paper presents a systematic literature review and targeted searches to define a synthesis framework mapping the awareness–action gap, progression along the awareness–action continuum and policy acceptability in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions mitigation among key stakeholders in Germany's cattle dairy and meat chains. The awareness–action gap results from barriers that prevent stakeholders from translating climate awareness into action, whereas progression reflects how far different stakeholder groups have advanced from awareness to action. Previous studies often focus on single stakeholder groups, individual policies or general national trends, but seldom examine how different stakeholders stagnate or progress from awareness to action or how policy acceptability can support this transition. Our synthesis framework integrates concepts and indicators from behavioural economics, social psychology and environmental policy to address these issues. We find strong disparities in four stakeholder groups regarding barriers to act. Producers face misaligned incentives and resource constraints. Consumers are hindered by cultural norms and weak market signals. Regulators struggle with fragmented policies and political hesitancy. Finally, influencers, which we define as entities such as media and think tanks that boost public discourse, amplify inconsistent narratives that impede coordinated action. We also assess the acceptability of 20 GHG mitigation policies for producers and consumers. For meat taxation, we analyse acceptability for two additional stakeholders: policymakers and social organisations. Three structural factors constrain policy uptake: fragmented stakeholder preferences, a lack of enforceable mechanisms for mid‐chain actors and weak institutional pathways to translate preferences into regulation. While some policies have higher acceptability, debated measures such as meat taxation still face low support across stakeholders. This illustrates how framing, layered atop structural constraints, ultimately shapes whether acceptability translates into implementation.