Effectiveness Evaluation Of Front-of-package Nutrition Labelling From Consumer Perspective

Food nutrition labelling is considered an important measure to promote a balanced and healthy diet by the World Health Organization.China currently adopts the food nutrition labelling policy that presents the nutrition facts on the back of food package,which is considered to be low in utilization,difficult to be understood by consumers,and cannot play the role of guidance,education and protection.In order to enable consumers to quickly capture and understand the nutrition information on food package,simple labelling of food nutrition information on the front of food package,namely front-of-package(FOP)labelling,is therefore becoming a popular food labelling policy.The Healthy China Initiative(2019-2030)has set the goal of "actively promoting the use of front-of-package labelling information on food packaging".But there is no international consensus on which front-of-package labelling can be understood by consumers and help them make healthier food decisions.Therefore,it is an important topic to explore Chinese consumers' understanding of front-of-package labelling and whether front-of-package labelling can promote consumers to make healthier food choices to evaluate the effectiveness of front-of-package labelling and promote the implementation and development of front-of-package labelling policy in China.According to “Guiding principles and framework manual for front-of-pack labelling for promoting healthy diet” issued by the World Health Organization(WHO),this dissertation has selected the guideline daily amount label widely used in various countries,the multiple traffic light label implemented in the UK,and the health star rating label implemented in Australia and New Zealand,and has made a comparison with the healthy choice label launched by the Chinese Nutrition Society.The effectiveness of health choice labels was evaluated by measuring consumers' understanding of labels(referring to previous studies,this dissertation has used health evaluation as a proxy for label understanding)and purchase intention of pre-packaged foods under different labels conditions(control group: no front-of-pack labelling;treatment groups: guideline daily amount label,multiple traffic light label,health star rating label,health choice label).Specific research objectives include :(1)the effect of front-of-pack labelling on health evaluation and purchase intention;(2)the factors of effects of front-of-pack labelling on health evaluation and purchase intention;(3)consumers' perception of front-of-pack labelling;(4)the mechanism of front-of-pack labelling on health evaluation and purchase intention.Based on the data from 1272 online questionnaires,the results showed that:(1)Compared with no front-of-pack labelling,the four front-of-package labels can significantly improve consumers' purchase intention to the healthier packaged food and the correct rate of food health evaluation.The health star rating label was the best,followed by the health choice label,multiple traffic light label and guideline daily amount label.Summary indicator labels had a greater impact on purchase intention and health evaluation than specific nutrient labels.(2)Motivation,experience,knowledge and demographic characteristics variables moderated the effect of front-of-pack labelling on health evaluation and purchase intention.The effects of the four front-of-package labels on purchase intention and health evaluation would increase with the increase of consumer health promotion focus,and only the effectiveness of healthy choice label would increase with the increase of health prevention focus.The effects of the four front-of-package labels would decrease with the improvement of consumers' subjective nutrition knowledge.At the same time,the effects of front-of-package labels are affected by the use of nutrition facts,food consumption frequency,perceived healthiness of food,residence,occupation and healthy life behavior.However,the effects vary with the labels.(3)In terms of label perception,consumers were most familiar with guideline daily amount label.However,the health star rating is the most smoothly processed,most popular and reliable front-of-pack labelling.At the same time,there are demographic differences in consumers' perception of labels.Respondents who lives in urban areas,has higher education levels,has higher income,are married and use nutrition fact panel more often had higher processing fluency.Respondents who were male,had higher income,were married,had a 12-year-old child,used nutrition fact panel regularly,and lived in the East and Northeast considered front-of-pack labelling more credible.Respondents who lived in urban areas,had higher incomes,were married,had a 12-year-old child and used nutrition fact panel regularly preferred front-of-package labelling.Health promotion focus,subjective nutrition knowledge and objective knowledge had significant positive effects on processing fluency,label credibility and label preference.Health prevention focus has a positive and significant effect on label credibility.Label familiarity has no significant effect on processing fluency,label credibility and label preference.(4)In terms of the mechanism of front-of-package labelling on health evaluation and purchase intention,based on the results of the bi-variable random effect Probit model,it was found that the effect of health evaluation on purchase intention observed in previous studies is actually caused by factors that are not observed and are related to health evaluation and purchase intention.Further,the results from the causal mediation effect under the counterfactual framework confirm that processing fluency is the core mechanism of front-of-package labelling on health evaluation and purchase intention.It was also found an interaction between processing fluency and front-of-package labelling on health evaluation and purchase intention.Processing guideline daily amount label and multiple traffic light label requires more cognitive effort as they provide more nutritional information about the product.Consumers' ability to make decisions with labels increases with processing fluency.Processing health star rating label and health choice label requires less cognitive effort as they provide limited product nutritional information,triggering heuristic intuitive cognitive systems,i.e.,system 1.Under this cognitive path,it may be necessary to compete with other heuristic elements for cognitive resources and therefore the effect of label processing fluency on health evaluation and purchase intention is weakened.Based on the results,several policy suggestions for the implementation and development of front-of-package labelling are put forward:(1)Front-of-package labelling tailored to the Chinese context is needed to be further developed and designed to help consumers identify and purchase healthier pre-packaged foods;(2)Visualizations on the front-of-package labelling should be attractive and easy to read;(3)Strengthen the education and publicity of the relevant knowledge of front-of-package labelling for consumers,and improve the motivation and ability of consumers to use front-of-package labelling,especially for the rural,low-income and low-education groups;(4)Establish long-term monitoring and evaluation mechanism for front-of-package labelling.