None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
Poor diet is a leading risk factor in global preventable morbidity. It can lead to high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, obesity and metabolic outcomes, which in turn are associated with a range of chronic illnesses such as coronary heart disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes and some forms of cancer. One public health intervention aimed at promoting the consumption of a balanced diet that has been widely adopted across the world is the provision of nutrition information on packaged foods. Nutrition information can appear on food in a variety of formats (such as the Nutrition Information Panel, front-of-pack labels and health claims). Although these sources of information often occur together on food packs, most previous studies have focused on the isolated effects of individual forms of nutrition information and either do not include or do not measure the impact of more than one source of nutrition information. An understanding of how consumers process this high volume of information on food packs or how they reconcile contradictory nutrition information is currently lacking. The primary aim of this study is to investigate how nutrition information format, healthiness and price interact to affect the perceived healthiness of a product, consumer purchase intentions and the amount of the product considered desirable/appropriate to eat.
Interventions
The intervention will involve presenting participants with hypothetical images of food packs that have been manipulated on the following attributes: healthiness (3 levels), front-of-pack label (4 levels), health claims (4 levels), price (3 levels) and food type (4 levels). All attributes will simultaneously appear in each hypothetical food pack image but the level of each attribute will vary across images. The attributes will be fully crossed with each other resulting in a pool of 576 total poss
The intervention will involve presenting participants with hypothetical images of food packs that have been manipulated on the following attributes: healthiness (3 levels), front-of-pack label (4 levels), health claims (4 levels), price (3 levels) and food type (4 levels). All attributes will simultaneously appear in each hypothetical food pack image but the level of each attribute will vary across images. The attributes will be fully crossed with each other resulting in a pool of 576 total possible images (i.e. 3 x 4 x 4 x 3 x 4 = 576). Each participant will be exposed to 8 images that will be drawn pseudo randomly from the larger pool with the constraints that each participant be exposed to 2 of each type of front-of-pack label and 2 of each food type. Each attribute is described in detail below. Front-of-pack label: Contains a control condition and 3 levels: no label, the Daily Intake Guide, Multiple Traffic Lights, Health Star Rating. Each participant will be exposed to all 4 levels of this attribute (i.e. they will be presented with 2 packs of each label type) and will act as their own control. Food type: Contains 4 levels: corn flakes, cookies, pizza, yogurt. Each participant will be exposed to all 4 levels of this attribute (i.e. they will be presented with 2 packs of each food type). Health claims: Contains a control condition and 3 levels: no claim, nutrient content claim, general level claim, higher level claim. Across all participant exposures to images, a quarter of the exposures will come from each of the 4 levels of the health claims attribute. Price: Contains 3 levels: cheap, moderate price, expensive. Across all participant exposures to images, a third of the exposures will come from each of the 3 levels of the price attribute. Healthiness: Contains 3 levels: unhealthy, moderately healthy, healthy. Across all participant exposures to images, a third of the exposures will come from each of the 3 levels of the healthiness attribute. Images of the hypothetical food packs will be viewed online by individual participants in a location of their choice. Participants will be allowed to view each image for as long as they require and thus the duration of the intervention will depend on the individual participant. It is estimated that participants will spend approximately 30 - 60 seconds viewing and answering questions about each image.
Sponsors
Curtin University
Study design
Allocation
Non-randomised trial
Intervention model
Other
Primary purpose
Prevention
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
10 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
Participants must be aged over 10 and currently reside in Australia.
Exclusion criteria
Demographic quotas based on age, sex and location will be used. Participants will be excluded if the quota bracket which they belong in has been filled.
Outcome results
None listed