Consumers' Emotional Reaction to Sustainability Cue

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

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.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Sustainable Food Consumption
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Priming intervention

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 200
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• Hong Kong
  • Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 000000
    • Jockey Club Tower

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Description

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

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: Single

Number of Arms

4

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
No Intervention: Control message group; Participants will not receive the priming manipulation.
Experimental: Health benefits priming group; Participants will be cueing with health benefits by asking to do a word-search exercise beginning with: "In the following, please choose words/statements that can indicate that having a healthy and sustainable diet can have health benefits, such as..."	Behavioral: Priming intervention; 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.
Experimental: Environmental benefits priming group; Participants will be cueing with environmental benefits by asking to do a word-search exercise beginning with: "In the following, please choose words/statements that can indicate that having a healthy and sustainable diet can have environmental benefits, such as..."	Behavioral: Priming intervention; 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.
Experimental: Environmental and health co-benefits priming group; Participants will be cueing with environmental and health co-benefits by asking to do a word-search exercise beginning with: "In the following, please choose words/statements that can indicate that having a healthy and sustainable diet can have both benefits for health and the environment, such as..."	Behavioral: Priming intervention; 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.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Participants' choice of sustainable foods	Measure 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.	Immediately after they are exposed to priming manipulation
Participants' facial expression	Measure 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.	Immediately after they are exposed to priming manipulation
Participants' eye movement data	Measure 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.	Immediately after they are exposed to priming manipulation

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Social orientation value	Measure 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.	Immediately after they complete the computerized task with priming manipulation
Pro-environmental values	Measure 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.	Immediately after they complete the computerized task with priming manipulation

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: The University of Hong Kong

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): May 12, 2023
• Primary Completion (Actual): September 28, 2023
• Study Completion (Actual): September 28, 2023

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: June 7, 2021
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: June 14, 2021
• First Posted (Actual): June 22, 2021

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Estimated): January 3, 2024
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: January 1, 2024
• Last Verified: January 1, 2024

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Other Study ID Numbers: 201901231sv_b

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: UNDECIDED
• IPD Plan Description: Data will be shared upon reasonable request from PI.

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No