Behavioural economics, policy interventions and food

Behavioral economics has a unique relationship with policy targeting food choice, focusing heavily on the development of effective interventions and very little on the development of new behavioral theory. In this chapter I document the set of tools used to create behavioral economic interventions to address food choice with a public health and public policy focus. A thorough discussion of the broad set of theoretical models of food behavior are presented, with some short discussion of their application. The chapter also gives a brief overview of empirical methods and how these influence intervention design and subsequent evidence. Using prior works in behavioral economics generally and food consumer behavior specifically, I synthesize a systematic approach to generate behavioral interventions in the food consumption space. An example intervention is developed to illustrate this systematic method.