Date created: | Last Updated:

Category: Project

Description: The tempting context in which unhealthy food is usually promoted undermines individuals’ efforts to eat healthily. This has stimulated investigations on healthy eating nudges with the goal of supporting consumers in their food choices. However, the increasing obesity rates emphasize the need for interventions beyond nudges that, rather than gently steering individual decisions, will change consumers' underlying perception of unhealthy foods. Here, we set forth to investigate how first-person narratives by health experts affect individuals’ willingness to pay (WTP) for sugar-free and sugar-containing food products. Subjects performed two blocks of a bidding task, where they had to bid on sweets labeled either as “sugar-free” or as “sugar-containing”. In-between the two blocks, half of the participants listened to a narrative by a dietary specialist about the health risks of sugar consumption, whereas the remaining participants listened to a control narrative irrelevant to food choices. We demonstrate that the dietary specialist’s narrative decreased individuals’ WTP for sugar-containing food, but did not modulate their WTP for sugar-free food. Further, the observed effect was found to not be moderated by such personality traits as need for cognition and health knowledge. Overall, our findings suggest that consumers conform to first-person narratives by health experts when evaluating food products. This paves the way for an avenue of innovative marketing strategies to vigorously support individuals in their food choices.