{"title":"Can we improve the healthiness of online food purchases through the Nutri-Score and site design?","authors":"E. Godden , N. Dens , B. Coppens , L. Thornton","doi":"10.1016/j.foodpol.2025.102899","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>To encourage healthier food choices, several European countries have adopted the Nutri-Score front-of-pack label. This voluntary label was designed for products on display within supermarkets. Despite the digital transition, the impact of Nutri-Score in an online environment remains under-researched. This study assesses the impact of three Nutri-Score interventions on online food purchasing. Belgian participants (N = 1151) shopped for groceries in a purpose-built Virtual Online Supermarket with a prescribed shopping list. Participants were randomly assigned to one of seven conditions comprising up to three interventions: Nutri-Score presence (no/yes), default product sorting by Nutri-Score (yes/no), and the options to filter and sort by Nutri-Score (no/yes). The outcomes of interest were mean UK Food Standards Agency nutrient profiling system diet score and the percentage of and expenditure on food items with Nutri-Score A, B, C, D, and E. Compared to the control group, the mere presence of Nutri-Scores did not affect the outcomes of interest. Changing the default sorting from alphabetically to by healthiness improved the mean diet score, increased the purchase of items with Nutri-Scores A and B, and reduced the purchase of items with Nutri-Scores D and E. In contrast, when present, the user-driven options to filter and sort the products by healthiness were barely used (<10 %), and this intervention didn’t change purchases. In sum, changing the default sorting of products so that healthier products appear first may encourage consumers to buy healthier.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":321,"journal":{"name":"Food Policy","volume":"134 ","pages":"Article 102899"},"PeriodicalIF":6.0000,"publicationDate":"2025-06-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Food Policy","FirstCategoryId":"97","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306919225001046","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS & POLICY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
To encourage healthier food choices, several European countries have adopted the Nutri-Score front-of-pack label. This voluntary label was designed for products on display within supermarkets. Despite the digital transition, the impact of Nutri-Score in an online environment remains under-researched. This study assesses the impact of three Nutri-Score interventions on online food purchasing. Belgian participants (N = 1151) shopped for groceries in a purpose-built Virtual Online Supermarket with a prescribed shopping list. Participants were randomly assigned to one of seven conditions comprising up to three interventions: Nutri-Score presence (no/yes), default product sorting by Nutri-Score (yes/no), and the options to filter and sort by Nutri-Score (no/yes). The outcomes of interest were mean UK Food Standards Agency nutrient profiling system diet score and the percentage of and expenditure on food items with Nutri-Score A, B, C, D, and E. Compared to the control group, the mere presence of Nutri-Scores did not affect the outcomes of interest. Changing the default sorting from alphabetically to by healthiness improved the mean diet score, increased the purchase of items with Nutri-Scores A and B, and reduced the purchase of items with Nutri-Scores D and E. In contrast, when present, the user-driven options to filter and sort the products by healthiness were barely used (<10 %), and this intervention didn’t change purchases. In sum, changing the default sorting of products so that healthier products appear first may encourage consumers to buy healthier.
期刊介绍:
Food Policy is a multidisciplinary journal publishing original research and novel evidence on issues in the formulation, implementation, and evaluation of policies for the food sector in developing, transition, and advanced economies.
Our main focus is on the economic and social aspect of food policy, and we prioritize empirical studies informing international food policy debates. Provided that articles make a clear and explicit contribution to food policy debates of international interest, we consider papers from any of the social sciences. Papers from other disciplines (e.g., law) will be considered only if they provide a key policy contribution, and are written in a style which is accessible to a social science readership.