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Consumers' Emotional Reaction to Sustainability Cue

Can we Prime Sustainable Food Choice? A Mix-methods Study

Status
Completed
Phases
NA
Study type
Interventional
Source
ClinicalTrials.gov
Registry ID
NCT04935203
Enrollment
200
Registered
2021-06-22
Start date
2023-05-12
Completion date
2023-09-28
Last updated
2024-01-03

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

Sustainable Food Consumption

Brief summary

This will be a randomized control trial (RCT) to examine whether the three priming interventions (health priming, environmental sustainability priming, and co-benefits priming) work to change consumers' sustainable food choice through their effects on changing consumers' emotional reaction when seeing foods with cues of environmental sustainability, which will be indicated by measuring consumers' facial expression, eye movement and pupil dilation.

Interventions

The priming manipulation will be embedded in one computerized experiment to test the effect of three priming interventions on people's emotional reaction and their subsequent sustainable food selection. The priming conditions include priming with health benefits, environment benefits, and co-benefits of having sustainable diets, respectively. The cueing manipulation will be achieved by asking participants to complete a word-search exercise. Brief introduction will be provided to guide participants to choose words/statements that can indicate having a health and sustainable diet can have one of the three benefits: health benefits, environmental benefits or both benefits. The exercise will take \ 2 min.

Sponsors

The University of Hong Kong
Lead SponsorOTHER

Study design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH
Masking
SINGLE (Outcomes Assessor)

Eligibility

Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
Yes

Inclusion criteria

* Subjects should be aged 18 years or above * Subjects should be Hong Kong residents * Subjects should be able to read Chinese

Exclusion criteria

* Subjects who have vegan or vegetarian diets will be excluded * Subjects who have to follow special diets due to illnesses will be excluded * Subjects domestic helpers will also be excluded

Design outcomes

Primary

MeasureTime frameDescription
Participants' choice of sustainable foodsImmediately after they are exposed to priming manipulationMeasure name: Participants' food choice for sustainable food Measure tool: E-prime Measure process: During the computerized task, participants will examine a series of food products. Subsequently participants will be directed to simulated webpage for online shopping with all the foods they have examined available and they are required to buy three products they like most with the available budget provided. Measure units: Participants' actual food choice, whether they prefer choosing more sustainable food.
Participants' facial expressionImmediately after they are exposed to priming manipulationMeasure name: Participants' facial expression measured by pupil diameters Measure tool: E-prime with Tobii Pro eye trackers Measure units: Pupil diameters will be used to compare difference when participants view the less or more sustainable foods. The larger pupillary variations is an indicator of interest in the products.
Participants' eye movement dataImmediately after they are exposed to priming manipulationMeasure name: Participants' eye movement data Measure tool: E-prime with Tobii Pro eye trackers Measure units: Count frequency of looking at the environmentally friendly logo for each food category. Greater number indicates greater degree of attention and interest.

Secondary

MeasureTime frameDescription
Social orientation valueImmediately after they complete the computerized task with priming manipulationMeasure name: Social Orientation Value (SVO) Measure tool: survey questionnaire Measure units: Participants will be classified as prosocial, individualistic, or competitive if they made at least six or more choices consistent with one of the orientations.
Pro-environmental valuesImmediately after they complete the computerized task with priming manipulationMeasure name: New Environmental Paradigm (a reduced 6-items version) Measure tool: Survey questionnaire Measure unit: All the responses will be measured on a 5-point agreement scale. Greater aggregated score indicates greater environmental concern.

Countries

Hong Kong

Outcome results

None listed

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov · Data processed: Feb 4, 2026