Role of Nutri-Score and Eco-Score in shaping consumers’ sensory expectations and purchase intention: An eye-tracking study on animal- and plant-based foods

Objective Front-of-package (FOP) labeling schemes could be adopted to provide consumers with timely and credible information and to promote healthy and sustainable food consumption. In addition, when defining healthy and sustainable food behaviors, international authorities agree that reducing meat consumption could be of benefit to both human health and the planet. Given the increasing interest in plant-based meat alternatives (PBMAs) and FOP labels, we investigate in this study how interpretative FOP labels—the Nutri Score (NS) and Eco Score (ES)—impact consumers' sensory expectations and purchase intention of a meat product and its plant-based counterpart. Method Using eye-tracking data, we analyzed whether and to what extent attention to these labels affects participants’ behaviors (n = 76). In addition, to explore differences across consumer segments we divided our sample based on the Meat Attachment Questionnaire (MAQ) to classify subjects according to their bond towards meat consumption. Results Results showed that attention to the NS or ES did not impact participants with higher MAQ scores (i.e., with a more positive bond toward meat consumption); however, sensory expectations of both the meat and plant-based product were influenced by consumer visual attention for participants with a lower meat attachment level (i.e., with lower MAQ scores). Specifically, we found a positive relationship between the attention paid to the positive ES of the plant-based product and the expectation of liking it (abreviated as "expected liking"), and a positive interaction between the attention paid to the negative NS of the animal product and its expected liking. Conclusions We show that favorable sustainable labels can positively shape consumers’ expectations for PBMAs, while negative labels do not undermine expected liking or purchase intention for animal products, and discuss our results to provide insights for future research and implications for both food industries and policymakers.