Consumers’ beliefs about health and taste attributes of ready-to-eat breakfast cereals predict consideration of nutritionally differentiated subsets of products

Abstract

Inaccurate beliefs about product attributes may lead consumers to omit items from consideration in complex choice environments that they would have wanted to consider if their beliefs were accurate. Inaccurate beliefs about food attributes are well documented. Here, we examine how consumers’ beliefs about health, taste, and price attributes of food products affect the set of products they consider during the choice process. We analyze the set of products participants considered in an experiment on food choice in a choice environment featuring dozens of ready-to-eat breakfast cereals. We examine the role that participants’ beliefs about health, taste, and price attributes of products in each potential set play in predicting attention to products. Our findings show that beliefs about taste and health significantly influence people’s choices of the product set to view. Believing that products in a particular set were relatively healthier or tastier than products in an alternative set positively predicted the choice to view that set of products. This has important implications for policies that require product comparison to be effective, such as information on nutrition facts panels or changing relative prices via taxes or subsidies. If individuals hold inaccurately negative health beliefs about a product, they may omit that product from consideration, which will prevent them from comparing that product with alternatives they do examine. Thus, belief-driven inattention to products may reduce the effectiveness of policies aiming to promote healthier food choices through the application of taxes or subsidies by preventing comparison of nutritionally diverse products.