Consumers' Emotional Reaction to Sustainability Cue

NCT04935203 | Completed

• 1 other identifier: 201901231sv_b
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 200
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

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.

Conditions

Sustainable Food Consumption

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (3)

• 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 Outcomes (2)

• Social orientation value

  Immediately after they complete the computerized task with priming manipulation

• Pro-environmental values

  Immediately after they complete the computerized task with priming manipulation

Study Arms (4)

Control message group

NO INTERVENTION

Participants will not receive the priming manipulation.

Health benefits priming group

EXPERIMENTAL

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

Environmental benefits priming group

EXPERIMENTAL

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

Environmental and health co-benefits priming group

EXPERIMENTAL

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

Interventions

Priming intervention BEHAVIORAL

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.

Environmental and health co-benefits priming group; Environmental benefits priming group; Health benefits priming group

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: 18 Years+
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Age Groups: Adult (18-64), Older Adult (65+)

You may qualify if:

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

You may not qualify if:

• 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

Sponsors & Collaborators

• The University of Hong Kong: lead

Study Sites (1)

Jockey Club Tower

Hong Kong, 000000, Hong Kong

Location

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: RANDOMIZED
• Masking: SINGLE
• Who Masked: OUTCOMES ASSESSOR
• Purpose: HEALTH SERVICES RESEARCH
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
• PI Title: Assistant Professor

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: June 7, 2021
• First Posted: June 22, 2021
• Study Start: May 12, 2023
• Primary Completion: September 28, 2023
• Study Completion: September 28, 2023
• Last Updated: January 3, 2024

Record last verified: 2024-01

Locations

HK (1)