Food Labeling and Consumer Behaviors
A special issue of Nutrients (ISSN 2072-6643). This special issue belongs to the section "Nutrition Methodology & Assessment".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (25 February 2026) | Viewed by 3160
Special Issue Editors
Interests: food labelling; food consumption; agricultural economics; food economics; consumer behavior
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: rural development; rural education and nutrition and health; rural public policy impact assessment; development economics; human capital; nutrition and education policies and their impact assessment
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
We are pleased to invite you to contribute to the Special Issue of the journal Nutrients on the subject area of “Food Labeling and Consumer Behaviors”.
This research topic aims to explore the role of food labeling in shaping consumer behaviors and promoting public health. As a key policy tool for guiding consumer choices, food labels provide essential information about food composition and quality, enabling individuals to make more informed and health-conscious dietary decisions.
In recent years, the prevalence of diet-related chronic diseases, such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular conditions, has prompted growing interest in how front-of-package and back-of-package labels influence food purchasing and consumption patterns. The quality labels for foods have been widely discussed, such as organic or green foods. While traditional food labels for nutrients have long been mandated in many countries, emerging labeling systems have sparked new research on their comparative effectiveness across different populations and settings.
This Special Issue is aimed at providing selected contributions that examine the mechanisms, effectiveness, and implications of food labeling on consumer behaviors, with a particular emphasis on consumers' willingness to pay, policy interventions, and methodological innovations.
Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Consumers’ preferences or willingness to pay for various food labels;
- Effectiveness of different types of food labels on food choices;
- Effect of food labels on dietary intake, purchasing behavior, and long-term health outcomes;
- Socio-demographic differences in label use and perception;
- Integration of digital technologies to enhance the utility of food labels;
- Field experiments and natural experiments evaluating label-related interventions;
- Mechanisms underlying consumers’ behaviors toward food labels;
- Cross-country comparisons of labeling policies and consumer responses.
Prof. Dr. Yanjun Ren
Prof. Dr. Qiran Zhao
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Nutrients is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- food labeling
- food consumption
- consumer behavior
- consumer preference
- consumer willingness to pay
- food choice
- information intervention
- policy evaluation
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