Less Is Better: How Nutrition and Low-Carbon Labels Jointly Backfire on the Evaluation of Food Products

• Published in: Nutrients Vol. 13; no. 4; p. 1088
• Main Authors: Huang, Yuanhao, Yang, Xiaoke, Li, Xianguo, Chen, Qian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 26.03.2021; MDPI
• Subjects: Agricultural production; anticipated enjoyment; Backfire; Bias; Carbon; Carbon footprint; Choice Behavior; Consumer Behavior; Consumers; Consumption; Dairy products; Descriptive labeling; Environment; Environmental aspects; Environmental impact; Food; Food analysis; Food consumption; Food Labeling; Food production; Food products; Food quality; Health Behavior; Health care; Humans; Hypotheses; Ice cream; Labels; low-carbon label; Nutrition; nutrition label; Nutritive Value; Preferences; Research methodology; Resource allocation; sustainable; Sustainable use; zero-sum bias; anticipated enjoyment; low-carbon label; nutrition label; resource allocation; zero-sum bias; sustainable
• ISSN: 2072-6643; 2072-6643
• DOI: 10.3390/nu13041088

(1) Background: Labeling is one of the significant strategies to guide sustainable consumption behaviors. Nowadays, multi labels being displayed on the front-of-pack of food products is a common phenomenon. However, labels seldom operate solo, and competition or complement effects may be exerted on different labels. Therefore, the research objective is to explore the interaction effect when nutrition and low-carbon labels appear simultaneously; (2) Methods: Across four scenario-based experiments, including ice cream, yogurt, steak, and toast, this study manipulated the separate and joint occurrences of low-carbon and nutrition labels, the interaction effect of joint labels was tested, and the serial mediation model, which includes resource allocation and anticipated enjoyment of food consumption, was verified; (3) Results: Results show that people have a positive preference for the nutrition label and the carbon label, respectively, while these two labels working simultaneously attenuate the positive effect of the single label. When facing nutrition and carbon labels simultaneously, people would infer partial resources are allocated to healthy and environmental aspects so they have a lower anticipated enjoyment from food consumption. Thus, these two labels working simultaneously attenuate the positive effect of the single label, and consumers have a lower evaluation of food products. In addition, the joint backfire on the effect is only exerted on people with a higher level of zero-sum bias and only when joint labels have a high consistency of labels; (4) Conclusions: This study solved the contradictory problem of the joint effect of positive labels. The findings in this research contribute to promote sustainable food consumption. We suggest that similar labels should be avoided in the same front-of-pack of food, and manufacturers need to use ads to bring down consumers' zero-sum bias.