Version 1
: Received: 24 April 2024 / Approved: 24 April 2024 / Online: 25 April 2024 (09:23:56 CEST)
How to cite:
Tuyizere, O.; Gustafson, C.R.; Rose, D.J. Health Prompts Affect Consideration of Health but Not Intertemporal Preferences While Promoting Healthier Food Choices. Preprints2024, 2024041638. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202404.1638.v1
Tuyizere, O.; Gustafson, C.R.; Rose, D.J. Health Prompts Affect Consideration of Health but Not Intertemporal Preferences While Promoting Healthier Food Choices. Preprints 2024, 2024041638. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202404.1638.v1
Tuyizere, O.; Gustafson, C.R.; Rose, D.J. Health Prompts Affect Consideration of Health but Not Intertemporal Preferences While Promoting Healthier Food Choices. Preprints2024, 2024041638. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202404.1638.v1
APA Style
Tuyizere, O., Gustafson, C.R., & Rose, D.J. (2024). Health Prompts Affect Consideration of Health but Not Intertemporal Preferences While Promoting Healthier Food Choices. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202404.1638.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Tuyizere, O., Christopher R. Gustafson and Devin J. Rose. 2024 "Health Prompts Affect Consideration of Health but Not Intertemporal Preferences While Promoting Healthier Food Choices" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202404.1638.v1
Abstract
Diet-related diseases impact populations across the globe. While intertemporal preferences—a fundamental preference for the distribution of benefits across time—have been used to explain low-quality food choices, recent literature proposes another cause: inattention to future implications (or opportunity costs) of the options faced. Food choices tend to become habitual to conserve cognitive resources, rather than carefully modeling future health impacts. Both low discount rates for future benefits and attention to future health impacts predict healthier decisions. While intertemporal preferences are stable, attention may provide an opportunity to intervene in the decision process to promote healthier decisions. In this study, we test the impact of a simple message that highlights health during food choice on the healthiness of foods chosen and on health consideration and intertemporal preferences. Our results show that actively considering health outcomes and lower discount rates lead to healthier food choices. We find that messaging increases the consideration of health outcomes during food choice but does not affect intertemporal preferences, suggesting that simple prompts may be an effective way to promote decisions balancing short and long-term benefits by drawing attention to overlooked opportunity costs of choices.
Keywords
point-of-decision prompt; active health consideration; health promotion; intertemporal preferences; nutrition; food choice
Subject
Social Sciences, Behavior Sciences
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
