IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/feb/framed/00443.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Behavioralist as Nutritionist: Leveraging Behavioral Economics to Improve Child Food Choice and Consumption

Author

Listed:
  • John List
  • Anya Samek

Abstract

Childhood obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the U.S., with now almost a third of children ages 2-19 deemed overweight or obese. In this study, we leverage recent findings from behavioral economics to explore new approaches to tackling one aspect of childhood obesity: food choice and consumption. Using a field experiment where we include more than 1,500 children, we report several key insights. First, we find that individual incentives can have large influences: in the control, only 17% of children prefer the healthy snack, whereas the introduction of small incentives increases take-up of the healthy snack to roughly 75%, more than a four-fold increase. There is some evidence that the effects continue after the treatment period, consistent with a model of habit formation. Second, we find little evidence that the framing of incentives (loss versus gain) matters. While incentives work, we find that educational messaging alone has little influence on food choice. Yet, we do observe an important interaction effect between messaging and incentives: together they provide an important influence on food choice. For policymakers, our findings show the power of using incentives to combat childhood obesity. For academics, our approach opens up an interesting combination of theory and experiment that can lead to a better understanding of theories that explain healthy decisions and what incentives can influence them.

Suggested Citation

  • John List & Anya Samek, 2014. "The Behavioralist as Nutritionist: Leveraging Behavioral Economics to Improve Child Food Choice and Consumption," Framed Field Experiments 00443, The Field Experiments Website.
  • Handle: RePEc:feb:framed:00443
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://s3.amazonaws.com/fieldexperiments-papers2/papers/00443.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Perry, C.L. & Bishop, D.B. & Taylor, G. & Murray, D.M. & Mays, R.W. & Dudovitz, B.S. & Smyth, M. & Story, M., 1998. "Changing fruit and vegetable consumption among children: The 5-a-day power plus program in St. Paul, Minnesota," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 88(4), pages 603-609.
    2. John Cawley & Joshua A. Price, 2011. "Outcomes in a Program that Offers Financial Rewards for Weight Loss," NBER Chapters, in: Economic Aspects of Obesity, pages 91-126, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Belot, Michèle & James, Jonathan, 2011. "Healthy school meals and educational outcomes," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 489-504, May.
    4. Michèle, Belot & Jonathan, James & Patrick, Nolen, 2013. "Changing Eating Habits - A Field Experiment in Primary Schools," SIRE Discussion Papers 2013-44, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    5. Harbaugh, William & Krause, Catherine & Vesterlund, Lise, 2001. "Are Children Better Behaved Than Adults? Age, Experience and the Endowment Effect," Staff General Research Papers Archive 1950, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    6. Glenn W. Harrison & John A. List, 2004. "Field Experiments," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(4), pages 1009-1055, December.
    7. Michael Grossman & Naci H. Mocan, 2011. "Economic Aspects of Obesity," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number gros09-1, May.
    8. Smith, Trenton G. & Tasnadi, Attila, 2007. "A theory of natural addiction," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 316-344, May.
    9. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    10. Tanjim Hossain & John A. List, 2012. "The Behavioralist Visits the Factory: Increasing Productivity Using Simple Framing Manipulations," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(12), pages 2151-2167, December.
    11. Uri Gneezy & Stephan Meier & Pedro Rey-Biel, 2011. "When and Why Incentives (Don't) Work to Modify Behavior," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 25(4), pages 191-210, Fall.
    12. Steven D. Levitt & John A. List & Susanne Neckermann & Sally Sadoff, 2016. "The Behavioralist Goes to School: Leveraging Behavioral Economics to Improve Educational Performance," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 183-219, November.
    13. Gary Charness & Uri Gneezy, 2009. "Incentives to Exercise," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(3), pages 909-931, May.
    14. Roland Fryer & Steven Levitt & John List & Sally Sadoff, 2012. "Enhancing the Efficacy of Teacher Incentives through Loss Aversion: A Field Experiment," Framed Field Experiments 00591, The Field Experiments Website.
    15. David R. Just & Joseph Price, 2013. "Using Incentives to Encourage Healthy Eating in Children," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 48(4), pages 855-872.
    16. Glenn W. Harrison & Morten I. Lau & E. Elisabet Rutström, 2007. "Estimating Risk Attitudes in Denmark: A Field Experiment," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 109(2), pages 341-368, June.
    17. Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman, 1991. "Loss Aversion in Riskless Choice: A Reference-Dependent Model," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(4), pages 1039-1061.
    18. repec:mpr:mprres:6257 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. repec:mpr:mprres:6259 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Harbaugh, William T. & Krause, Kate & Vesterlund, Lise, 2001. "Are adults better behaved than children? Age, experience, and the endowment effect," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 70(2), pages 175-181, February.
    21. Grossman, Michael & Mocan, Naci (ed.), 2011. "Economic Aspects of Obesity," National Bureau of Economic Research Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226310091, August.
    22. Malotte, C.K. & Rhodes, F. & Mais, K.E., 1998. "Tuberculosis screening and compliance with return for skin test reading among active drug users," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 88(5), pages 792-796.
    23. Just, David R. & Mancino, Lisa & Wansink, Brian, 2007. "Could Behavioral Economics Help Improve Diet Quality for Nutrition Assistance Program Participants?," Economic Research Report 6391, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    24. repec:mpr:mprres:5077 is not listed on IDEAS
    25. Thaler, Richard, 1980. "Toward a positive theory of consumer choice," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 1(1), pages 39-60, March.
    26. Cawley, John & Price, Joshua A., 2013. "A case study of a workplace wellness program that offers financial incentives for weight loss," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 794-803.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jie, Yun, 2018. "Prepayment effect: Prepayment with clawback increases task participation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 210-218.
    2. Manuela Angelucci & Silvia Prina & Heather Royer & Anya Samek, 2015. "When Incentives Backfire: Spillover Effects in Food Choice," NBER Working Papers 21481, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. John A. List & Anya Samek, 2017. "A Field Experiment on the Impact of Incentives on Milk Choice in the Lunchroom," Public Finance Review, , vol. 45(1), pages 44-67, January.
    4. John A. List & Anya Samek & Terri Zhu, 2022. "Incentives to Eat Healthily: Evidence from a Grocery Store Field Experiment," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 89(354), pages 489-509, April.
    5. Belot, Michèle & James, Jonathan & Nolen, Patrick, 2016. "Incentives and children's dietary choices: A field experiment in primary schools," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 213-229.
    6. Elbæk, Christian T. & Lystbæk, Martin Nørhede & Mitkidis, Panagiotis, 2022. "On the psychology of bonuses: The effects of loss aversion and Yerkes-Dodson law on performance in cognitively and mechanically demanding tasks," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    7. Olivier Armantier & Amadou Boly, 2015. "Framing Of Incentives And Effort Provision," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 56(3), pages 917-938, August.
    8. Tatiana A. Homonoff, 2018. "Can Small Incentives Have Large Effects? The Impact of Taxes versus Bonuses on Disposable Bag Use," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 177-210, November.
    9. Cawley, John & Price, Joshua A., 2013. "A case study of a workplace wellness program that offers financial incentives for weight loss," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 794-803.
    10. Bogliacino, Francesco & Codagnone, Cristiano, 2021. "Microfoundations, behaviour, and evolution: Evidence from experiments," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 372-385.
    11. Santosh Anagol & Vimal Balasubramaniam & Tarun Ramadorai, 2018. "Endowment Effects in the Field: Evidence from India’s IPO Lotteries," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 85(4), pages 1971-2004.
    12. Takanori Ida & Wenjie Wang, 2014. "A Field Experiment on Dynamic Electricity Pricing in Los Alamos:Opt-in Versus Opt-out," Discussion papers e-14-010, Graduate School of Economics Project Center, Kyoto University.
    13. Astrid Gamba & Luca Stanca, 2023. "Mis-judging merit: the effects of adjudication errors in contests," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 26(3), pages 550-587, July.
    14. John A. List & Michael K. Price, 2016. "Editor's Choice The Use of Field Experiments in Environmental and Resource Economics," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 10(2), pages 206-225.
    15. Mahmoodi, Jasmin & Prasanna, Ashreeta & Hille, Stefanie & Patel, Martin K. & Brosch, Tobias, 2018. "Combining “carrot and stick” to incentivize sustainability in households," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 31-40.
    16. Brigitte C. Madrian, 2014. "Applying Insights from Behavioral Economics to Policy Design," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 663-688, August.
    17. Christina Gravert & Linus Olsson Collentine, 2019. "When nudges aren't enough: Incentives and habit formation in public transport usage," CEBI working paper series 19-10, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI).
    18. Maria Apostolova‐Mihaylova & William Cooper & Gail Hoyt & Emily C. Marshall, 2015. "Heterogeneous gender effects under loss aversion in the economics classroom: A field experiment," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 81(4), pages 980-994, April.
    19. Gong, Jie & Liu, Tracy Xiao & Tang, Jie, 2021. "How monetary incentives improve outcomes in MOOCs: Evidence from a field experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 905-921.
    20. Eszter Czibor & Danny Hsu & David Jimenez-Gomez & Susanne Neckermann & Burcu Subasi, 2022. "Loss-Framed Incentives and Employee (Mis-)Behavior," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(10), pages 7518-7537, October.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • I15 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health and Economic Development

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:feb:framed:00443. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Francesca Pagnotta (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.fieldexperiments.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.