Prada Marília, Garrido Margarida V, Rodrigues David
Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), CIS - IUL, Lisbon, Portugal.
Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), CIS - IUL, Lisbon, Portugal.
Appetite. 2017 Jul 1;114:175-186. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2017.03.031. Epub 2017 Mar 23.
The "organic" claim explicitly informs consumers about the food production method. Yet, based on this claim, people often infer unrelated food attributes. The current research examined whether the perceived advantage of organic over conventional food generalizes across different organic food types. Compared to whole organic foods, processed organic foods are less available, familiar and prototypical of the organic food category. In two studies (combined N = 258) we investigated how both organic foods types were perceived in healthfulness, taste and caloric content when compared to their conventional alternatives. Participants evaluated images of both whole (e.g., lettuce) and processed organic food exemplars (e.g., pizza), and reported general evaluations of these food types. The association of these evaluations with individual difference variables - self-reported knowledge and consumption of organic food, and environmental concerns - was also examined. Results showed that organically produced whole foods were perceived as more healthful, tastier and less caloric than those produced conventionally, thus replicating the well-established halo effect of the organic claim in food evaluation. The organic advantage was more pronounced among individuals who reported being more knowledgeable about organic food, consumed it more frequently, and were more environmentally concerned. The advantage of the organic claim for processed foods was less clear. Overall, processed organic (vs. conventional) foods were perceived as tastier, more healthful (Study 1) or equally healthful (Study 2), but also as more caloric. We argue that the features of processed food may modulate the impact of the organic claim, and outline possible research directions to test this assumption. Uncovering the specific conditions in which food claims bias consumer's perceptions and behavior may have important implications for marketing, health and public-policy related fields.
“有机”这一宣称明确地向消费者告知了食品的生产方式。然而，基于这一宣称，人们常常推断出一些不相关的食品属性。当前的研究考察了有机食品相较于传统食品的感知优势是否适用于不同类型的有机食品。与天然有机食品相比，加工有机食品的可得性更低，人们对其熟悉程度更低，且在有机食品类别中也不那么具有代表性。在两项研究中（样本总量N = 258），我们调查了这两种类型的有机食品与它们的传统对应食品相比，在健康程度、口感和热量含量方面是如何被人们感知的。参与者对天然（如生菜）和加工有机食品样本（如披萨）的图片进行了评估，并报告了对这些食品类型的总体评价。我们还考察了这些评价与个体差异变量——自我报告的有机食品知识和消费情况，以及环境关注度——之间的关联。结果显示，有机生产的天然食品被认为比传统生产的食品更健康、口感更好且热量更低，从而在食品评价中重现了已被充分证实的有机宣称的光环效应。有机优势在那些报告称对有机食品了解更多、更频繁食用有机食品且更关注环境的个体中更为明显。有机宣称对加工食品的优势则不太明确。总体而言，加工有机（与传统）食品被认为口感更好、更健康（研究1）或同样健康（研究2），但也被认为热量更高。我们认为加工食品的特性可能会调节有机宣称的影响，并概述了检验这一假设的可能研究方向。揭示食品宣称使消费者认知和行为产生偏差的具体条件，可能对营销、健康及公共政策相关领域具有重要意义。
