Testing Emotional Eating Style in Relation to Willingness to Pay for Nutritional Claims
1
Centro de Investigación y Tecnología Agroalimentaria de Aragón (CITA), Unidad de Economía Agroalimentaria y de los Recursos Naturales, Saragossa 50013, Spain
2
Instituto Agroalimentario de Aragón (IA2), CITA-Universidad de Zaragoza, Saragossa 50059, Spain
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Nutrients 2019, 11(8), 1773; https://doi.org/10.3390/nu11081773
Received: 25 June 2019 / Revised: 28 July 2019 / Accepted: 30 July 2019 / Published: 1 August 2019
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Nutrition, Choice and Health-Related Claims)
In face of the high prevalence of non-communicable diseases, nutritional claims represent a useful tool to help people to make healthier food choices. However, recent research notes that when some people experience an intense emotional state, they increase their food consumption, particularly of energy-dense and sweet foods. In consequence, this study aims to assess whether emotional eating (EE) style influences the purchase of food products carrying these claims. To this end, a real choice experiment (RCE) was conducted with 306 participants who were asked to evaluate different types of toast. An error component random parameter logit (ECRPL) was used to analyze their preferences for reduced-fat and low-salt claims toast and the effects of the variation of the EE score on individual preferences. Findings of this study suggest that emotional eating negatively impacts purchasing behavior related to nutritional claims. In particular, a decrease of the willingness to pay between 9% and 16% for every unit of toast with nutritional claims was noted when an increase of EE individual score was registered. In this regard, to increase the effectiveness of the nutritional claims, policymakers and private sectors should consider the management of individuals’ emotional states in designing public health policies and marketing strategies, respectively.
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Keywords:
emotional eating; food choices; nutritional claims
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MDPI and ACS Style
López-Galán, B.; de-Magistris, T. Testing Emotional Eating Style in Relation to Willingness to Pay for Nutritional Claims. Nutrients 2019, 11, 1773. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu11081773
AMA Style
López-Galán B, de-Magistris T. Testing Emotional Eating Style in Relation to Willingness to Pay for Nutritional Claims. Nutrients. 2019; 11(8):1773. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu11081773
Chicago/Turabian StyleLópez-Galán, Belinda; de-Magistris, Tiziana. 2019. "Testing Emotional Eating Style in Relation to Willingness to Pay for Nutritional Claims" Nutrients 11, no. 8: 1773. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu11081773
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