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.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH
Masking
SINGLE
Enrollment
200
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.
Jockey Club Tower
Hong Kong, Hong Kong
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.
Time frame: 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.
Time frame: 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.
Time frame: Immediately after they are exposed to priming manipulation
Social orientation value
Measure name: Social Orientation Value (SVO) Measure tool: survey questionnaire Measure units: Participants will be classified as prosocial, individualistic, or competitive if they made at least six or more choices consistent with one of the orientations.
Time frame: Immediately after they complete the computerized task with priming manipulation
Pro-environmental values
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Measure name: New Environmental Paradigm (a reduced 6-items version) Measure tool: Survey questionnaire Measure unit: All the responses will be measured on a 5-point agreement scale. Greater aggregated score indicates greater environmental concern.
Time frame: Immediately after they complete the computerized task with priming manipulation