Nutritional and economic impact of 5 alternative front-of-pack nutritional labels: experimental evidence
European Journal of Agricultural Economics
We run a laboratory supermarket experiment to assess the effect of 5 front-of-pack labels on the nutritional and economic characteristics of subject’s shopping. We find that the NutriScore has the highest nutritional impact.
nutrition
label
behavioral public policy
Abstract
An incentivised laboratory framed field experiment with 691 subjects examined the impact of five front-of-pack labels (Multiple Traffic Lights; Reference Intakes; HealthStarRating; NutriScore and Système d’Etiquetage Nutritionnel Simplifié) on food shopping within a catalogue of 290 products. Using difference-in-difference, we estimate the between-label variability of within-subject changes in the shopping’s Food and Standards Agency aggregated nutritional score. All labels improve the nutritional quality (−1.56 FSA points on average). NutriScore is the most effective (−2.65), followed by HealthStarRating (−1.86). Behaviourally, subjects react mostly to the extreme values of the labels and not to intermediate values. Nutritional gains are not correlated with higher expenditure.