Kunz Sonja, Haasova Simona, Rieß Jannik, Florack Arnd
Department of Psychology, University of Vienna, 1010 Vienna, Austria.
Foods. 2020 Jan 28;9(2):134. doi: 10.3390/foods9020134.
The aim of traffic light labels on food products is to help consumers assess their healthiness. However, it is not clear whether traffic light labels do not have undesired side effects by signaling lower tastiness of healthy product alternatives and reducing purchase intentions. We therefore conducted a study with consumers from Austria ( = 173) in which we presented the amount of sugar contained in products on labels with or without traffic light colors based on the coding criteria of the UK Food Standards Agency. Expectations of products' healthiness and tastiness, as well as purchase intentions were assessed. The products were randomly sampled from the category of desserts from a supermarket. The declared amount of sugar was experimentally varied. The traffic light labels helped participants differentiate between the healthiness of products with different sugar levels. They did not affect the expected tastiness of the healthier alternatives. Moreover, participants did not report lower purchase intentions for products high in sugar, but a higher purchase intention for products low in sugar when traffic light colors were used compared to when they were not used.
食品上的交通灯标签旨在帮助消费者评估其健康程度。然而，尚不清楚交通灯标签是否会因暗示健康产品替代品的美味程度较低并降低购买意愿而产生不良副作用。因此，我们对来自奥地利的173名消费者进行了一项研究，在研究中，我们根据英国食品标准局的编码标准，在有或没有交通灯颜色的标签上展示产品中的含糖量。评估了对产品健康程度和美味程度的期望以及购买意愿。这些产品是从一家超市的甜点类别中随机抽取的。所宣称的含糖量经过实验性改变。交通灯标签帮助参与者区分了不同含糖量产品的健康程度。它们并未影响对更健康替代品的预期美味程度。此外，与未使用交通灯颜色时相比，当使用交通灯颜色时，参与者并未报告对高糖产品的购买意愿较低，而是对低糖产品的购买意愿较高。
