Transparently healthy & sustainable

In a joint research project Wageningen University and the University of Groningen and work together with leading Dutch retailers on understanding what it takes to make healthier and more sustainable food choices in (online) stores.

This project focusses on the behavioural aspects of information transparency and actionability of in-store interventions to enhance consumers’ ability to make informed choices at the point of purchase.

From a social as well as an individual perspective, it is important that consumer choice behaviour shifts towards healthier and more sustainable. Although information about healthfulness and sustainability of choice alternatives in (online) stores is abundant, the actual attention for and effective use of such information by consumers is quite limited. This project builds on the assumption that consumer-friendly transparency and actionability of (nutrition and sustainability) information is a key factor in making the available information matter, thereby stimulating healthful and sustainable choices in store. The aim of the research project is to fundamentally understand consumers’ (non-) use of information and to apply and validate those insights to build and test consumer-relevant decision support systems (ranging from information salience and transparency to hand-held information and decision tools) that can overcome the neglect of societally relevant information at point of purchase.

This project is funded by TKI Agri & Food (AF-18060) and in collaboration with the University of Groningen (prof. Koert Ittersum).

Pressrelease at start of project: https://www.wur.nl/en/Research-Results/Chair-groups/Social-Sciences/Marketing-and-Consumer-Behaviour-Group/Dutch-supermarkets-work-together-to-stimulate-a-more-healthy-and-sustainable-choice-behavior.htm  

Dutch summary: https://topsectoragrifood.nl/project/af-18060-transparant-gezond-duurzaam/