Source: CORNELL UNIVERSITY submitted to
EVALUATING THE IMPACT OF POSITIVELY AND NEGATIVELY-FRAMED ANTI-OBESITY ADVERTISING
Sponsoring Institution
National Institute of Food and Agriculture
Project Status
REVISED
Funding Source
HATCH
Reporting Frequency
Annual
Accession No.
1003974
Grant No.
(N/A)
Project No.
NYC-121453
Proposal No.
(N/A)
Multistate No.
(N/A)
Program Code
(N/A)
Project Start Date
Oct 1, 2014
Project End Date
Sep 30, 2018
Grant Year
(N/A)
Project Director
Liaukonyte, JU.
Recipient Organization
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
(N/A)
ITHACA,NY 14853
Performing Department
Applied Economics & Management
Non Technical Summary
Obesity rates have nearly doubled in adults and tripled in children in the past 30 years. Obesity poses risks not only to an individual's health but is also becoming a public policy issue, as the costs are approaching $150 billion a year to deal with medical expenses associated with illnesses caused by obesity.The efficacy of advertising that promotes healthy foods (positive advertising) and/or discourages unhealthy eating (negative advertising) in mitigating obesity has received scant attention in the literature. Positive ads are mostly represented by fruit and vegetable promotion, and are currently far less common than junk food ads. The limited amount of research on these policies has indicated that such advertising has a small but statistically significant effect on increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables. Negative anti-obesity advertising, similar to anti-smoking advertising, tends to rely on shock tactics and emotive appeals, and campaigns are primarily state-sponsored; however, they lag behind anti-smoking campaigns both in terms of duration and exposure levels. Moreover, recent research has suggested that there exists a threshold level for the anti-tobacco advertising to be effective, and the relatively modest levels of exposure to state-sponsored anti-obesity ads may be below the threshold required to have an impact on obesity. Little is known about the long-term effects of such advertising on dietary patterns.The preliminary lab-based research done by the PI suggests that both positive and negative advertising, to varying degrees, may be effective behavioral strategies to nudge people towards healthier eating habits. The principal goal of this research is to evaluate and compare the effects of positive and negative advertising on people's eating habits in the field and to propose reasonable marketing strategies for fruit and vegetable growers that would contribute to the increased sales of their production.We will conduct a field study in New York State. Individuals will be recruited and paid to participate in the field study with random assignment to control, positive advertising and negative advertising treatments. This will enable us to evaluate alternative advertising strategies to most effectively address the obesity issue. Ideally this work will reach a wide external audience within NYS and the U.S. and inform the public policy debate on whether and what type of public messages are effective at nudging people to positively change their diets.
Animal Health Component
0%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
100%
Developmental
(N/A)
Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)Subject of Investigation (SOI)Field of Science (FOS)Percent
60462203010100%
Knowledge Area
604 - Marketing and Distribution Practices;

Subject Of Investigation
6220 - Marketing, processing, and supply firms other than cooperatives;

Field Of Science
3010 - Economics;
Goals / Objectives
The overall goals are to achieve improved guidance on policy options designed to reduce obesity. The specific objectives are:1) to investigate whether positive fruit and vegetable advertising has a short- and long-term impact on decreasing consumers' daily intake and density of calories, fat, sodium, added sugar, and cholesterol;2) to compare the efficacy of positive vs. negative advertising;3) to determine whether there is a wear out effect of each type of advertising over time, and4) to propose reasonable marketing strategies for fruit and vegetable growers that would contribute to the increased sales of their production.
Project Methods
We will conduct a field study in New York State. Individuals will be recruited and paid to participate in the field study with random assignment to three treatments: (1) control, (2) positive advertising, and (3) negative advertising. The pre-treatment phase of the field study will last for 2 to 3 weeks, where each participant's BMI and daily consumption of food will be monitored and recorded. The daily food consumption will be converted to nutrient contents such as calories, fat, sodium, sugar, etc. The treatment phase of the field study will last for 4 to 6 weeks with daily consumption also being recorded. For the control group, subjects will be required to watch a one-hour media clip of television shows and non-food advertisements each week. The one-hour of television will feature clips from popular television shows and real ads without food or health mentions. The positive advertising treatment will be the same as the control, except that selected ads will include positive fruit and vegetable advertisements. The negative advertising treatment will be similar, with negative anti-obesity ads to be included among the other ads shown during the clip. The experimental design will allow us to estimate a difference-in-difference statistical model to measure whether each type of advertising has a statistically significant long- and short- term impact on the composition of nutrients consumed, and on BMI. Post-treatment period will allow us to observe potential wear out effects of negative and positive advertising once participants are no longer exposed to it.The primary outcome measure of our study will be the differences in energy and nutrient food intakes across the three treatments within our randomly selected field population. Although measurement of the actual, real-world impacts of advertising would be outside the scope of our study, we will be able to extrapolate from our findings to a state-wide or national sample to estimate potential obesity reduction and other public welfare outcomes due to our recommended public policy approaches.

Progress 10/01/16 to 09/30/17

Outputs
Target Audience: Nothing Reported Changes/Problems:Due to personal and professional reasons, the PI was not able to implement research related to this proposal over the last year, thus a 1 year extension to the project was granted, thus there is nothing to report for this time period. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Nothing Reported How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Nothing Reported What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Nothing Reported

Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals? Due to personal and professional reasons, the PI was not able to implement research related to this proposal over the last year, thus a 1 year extension to the project was granted, thus there is nothing to report for this time period.

Publications


    Progress 10/01/15 to 09/30/16

    Outputs
    Target Audience:Current results of the studies under the grant have been shared with academic and policy-making audiences, and attendees of the 2016 Annual Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Meeting in Boston, MA.Some results on the two consumer preferences studies have also been shared with local wine store owners in upstate New York, and small winery owners in Southern Oregon. Changes/Problems:During the stages of implementation of the design phase of the field experiment on consumer daily intake of nutrients under various advertising regimes, we ran into roadblocks that prevented us from carrying this experimental design forward. Instead, two new studies were designed and implemented, as described in the previous section. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The current research has generated insights into incorporating domain specific risk-attitudes measures and into using mouse tracking software to measure consumer's confidence in the indicated choice. Also, it has provided the researchers with new experience on collaborating with a local business in the context of research. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The results of the latter of the two studies designed and implemented during this reporting period was presented during the 2016 Annual Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Meeting in Boston, MA. Some preliminary results on various marketing strategies have also been disseminated among Southern Oregon small winery owners and upstate New York small business. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The results of current research inform us on how consumers react to new information depending on their prior health and environmental concerns, and how confident the choices they make are. As we are interested in the long-term impact of information on consumer choices, we now believe that incorporating some measures of choice confidence in one-shot experiments becomes exceedingly important, particularly when considering whether the observed treatment effects will persist over a longer time period.

    Impacts
    What was accomplished under these goals? During this reporting period, two research projects were carried out. First, to reach better understanding of the mechanisms behind how consumers select food items in the context of available health and production information, we designed a new experiment during this reporting period, looking at consumer decision-making in the context of health and environmental concerns, and varying information about production practices. In particular, we have designed and collected data for a new lab experiment that looked at how different information about typical production practices, including under some organic certification standards, affected consumer willingness-to-pay for wine, dependent on their prior health and environmental concerns. In particular, we have focused on identifying how health concerns mightimpact consumer choices under varying levels of certification standards information. We incorporated domain specific risk questionnaires to examine how potentially internally inconsistent risk preferences impact consumer demand. We have also used mouse tracking software during the experiment to provide a proxy for revealed, rather than stated, consumer confidence in his or her own choices. Second, we have designed andimplemented a field study in one of the local wine stores in upstate New York, looking at the social influences in consumer purchasing behavior of wine. This allowed us to further investigate reasonable marketing approaches for agri-food products, particularly in real life retail environments.

    Publications


      Progress 10/01/14 to 09/30/15

      Outputs
      Target Audience: Nothing Reported Changes/Problems:We decided that running the proposed field experiment is infeasible due to budget constraints, thus we are working on continuing to meet the proposal goals through the series of lab experiments instead. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The current research has generated insights into designing a large scale one-off field study, and provided the experience in designing food preference choice surveys. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?One paper on the long-term impact of negative and positive information was published in a peer-reviewed journal; this paper was also presented at one professional conference: ICAE 2015 (August 2015, Milan, Italy), Additionally, some preliminary results from the field stud in Zambia were presented at stakeholders workshop: Scaling Up Nutrition WFP Zambia "Consumer Preferences in Zambia" (July 2015, Lusaka, Zambia), and at an economics conference on Global Food Security (October 2015, Ithaca NY). What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?While initially we have planned on a field study, this period's experience with a large scale field experiment led us to believe that the objectives of the study would be better addressed with a series of targeted lab experiments, as the cost of field studies, especially one targeted at evaluation of short and long term effects of advertising, would be prohibitively high.

      Impacts
      What was accomplished under these goals? During this reporting period only, several research projects were developed under the "Evaluating The Impact Of Positively and Negatively-Framed Anti-Obesity Advertising" grant. First, we used previously collected data to investigate the impact of the long term impact of positive and negative information on food demand. The obtained results shed some light on the wear out of both positive and negative information, useful for the first and third objectives under the grant project, as listed below. Second, we piloted a trial field study in Zambia in collaboration with local partners to explore the use of mobile questionnaire applications in field data collection. We have developed choice experiments for that trial study to explore their usefulness in the field when looking at policy options designed to reduce obesity. We used mobile version of Qualtrics questionnaires, to pilot a choice experiment in the urban populations of Kitwe and Lusaka, Zambia. This project has not yielded any publications in the current reporting period, but has provided an insight into the challenges of a food behavior field study. Finally, we have started planning a series of lab experiments to address the main objectives of the project.

      Publications

      • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: Liaukonyte, Jura, Nadia A. Streletskaya, and Harry M. Kaiser. "The Long?Term Impact of Positive and Negative Information on Food Demand". Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie 63.4 (2015): 539-562.
      • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: 10. N. Streletskaya, W. Amatyakul, H. Kaiser, P. Rusmevichientong and J. Liaukonyte. 2015. Menu-Labeling Formats and Their Impact on Dietary Quality. Forthcoming, Agribusiness: An International Journal.
      • Type: Journal Articles Status: Published Year Published: 2015 Citation: T. Wang, J. Liaukonyte and H.M. Kaiser. 2015. Does Advertising Content Matter? Impacts of Healthy Eating and Anti-Obesity Advertising on Willingness-to-Pay by Consumer Body Mass Index. Forthcoming, Agricultural and Resource Economics Review.