Traffic lights and food choice: A choice experiment examining the relationship between nutritional food labels and price

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in ABSTRACTIn this paper we investigate how consumers respond to the UK food label Traffic Light System (TLS). Employing a Choice Experiment (CE) we find that consumers appear to behave in a manner consistent with our expectations regarding the impact of the TLS nutrition label. In particular, we identify a strong preference on the part of respondents to avoid a basket of goods containing a mix of foods with any "Red" lights. We have also found that consumers have a hierarchy of importance in terms of perception of the various nutrients examined and clear behavioural differences associated with particular socio-economic characteristics confirming early research on the use of nutrition labels. Overall our results indicate significant heterogeneity in the attitudes and responses of consumers to food labels within and across socioeconomic strata in terms of the magnitude of WTP.

First Catch Your Fish: Designing a “Low Energy Fish” Label

“…An additional factor is shown by Braun et al [31], who found that colour labels were more effective than monochrome when studying hazard perception. A similar result was obtained by Balcombe et al [32], where the message of a traffic light labelling system was enhance by the colour choices made.…”

Colour correct: the interactive effects of food label nutrition colouring schemes and food category healthiness on health perceptions

“…Results show that perceived healthiness of a product has biasing influence on what role colour coding can play in healthfulness evaluations, thus importantly qualifying earlier work on colour labels' efficacy in healthful food selection (11,12) . In particular, the healthy cereal product tested was perceived less healthy (healthiness HGUR = 4·10; healthiness HRUG = 3·70; healthiness control = 4·86) when carrying coloured nutritional labels even when factual information was identical.…”

Understanding how consumers categorise nutritional labels: A consumer derived typology for front-of-pack nutrition labelling

“…In earlier research Lobstein et al, (2007) reported that the Traffic Light (TL) labelling scheme was better at facilitating more healthful food choices when compared to the GDA approach. This finding was reflected in a number of other studies (Kelly et al, 2009;Balcombe et al, 2010) however Grunert and Wills (2007) identified that although consumers generally liked the TL scheme, the red colour could potentially be interpreted to mean 'not allowed' rather than 'limit intake'. It has therefore been suggested this approach may lead to avoidance by the consumer of important food groups which are essential for a wellbalanced diet e.g.…”