Indulgent or informative logos? Effects on university students’ intention to purchase healthy and sustainable food

Identifying strategies to steer consumers' eating habits toward healthier and more sustainable eating choices is a crucial aspect as consumers' food choices impact both human health and the planet. University students are the target group of this research as they would play an important role to shape the population's future diet. Considering the current increased use of online platforms for food purchasing, investigating approaches that could be effective in the online environment is critical. Thus, this research aims at testing to what extent the presence of a logo displayed on the menu of a hypothetical online platform could encourage students to select healthy and sustainable (H&S) dishes. The research includes both an explorative and an experimental study. First, four focus group discussions (explorative study) were conducted in December 2021. During these sessions, the logos tested in the second study were developed and results were used as input for the experimental study, i.e., an online survey. A between-group design approach was used to test the effect of an informative (“Healthy and Sustainable”, Treatment 1) and an indulgent (“Chef choice”, Treatment 2) logo displayed next to H&S dishes on the likelihood of university students selecting H&S dishes compared to a control group (no logo shown). Data collection took place during the spring of 2022 and 329 students participated in the survey. Results showed that the two logos had different impacts on students enrolled in different disciplines. Specifically, Food Science students’ purchase intention significantly decreased for non-H&S dishes when the informative logo was shown, whereas the purchase intention of students from non-food-related courses was not affected by either of the two logos. Furthermore, Non-Food Science students showed a lower tendency to consider the sensory appeal, sustainability, and healthy aspects in the process of selecting food. As a result, we believe there is a need to support students who are not directly involved in gastronomic and food science and encourage them to make different eating choices. A possible solution to reach this goal is to implement food policies to make food environments healthier, for instance through H&S dishes designated by a logo promoted at the university and/or community level. In this way, students would be more familiar with the proposed logo and more aware of the healthy and sustainable aspects related to their food decisions.