Skip to main content
OpenTrials
Completed

NCT Number: NCT04935203

Consumers' Emotional Reaction to Sustainability Cue

This will be a randomized control trial (RCT) to examine whether the three priming interventions (health priming, environmental sustainability priming, and co-benefits priming) work to change consumers' sustainable food choice through their effects on changing consumers' emotional reaction when seeing foods with cues of environmental sustainability, which will be indicated by measuring consumers' facial expression, eye movement and pupil dilation.

Completed

Looking for future studies?

Notify Me

Key information

Conditions

Sustainable Food Consumption

Age range

18 year and older

Sex eligibility

All sexes

Study type

Interventional

Phase

Not applicable

Primary location

Jockey Club Tower

Hong Kong, 000000

Who can participate

Healthy volunteers accepted: Yes

Only the study team can determine whether someone qualifies for participation.

Inclusion criteria

  • Subjects should be aged 18 years or above
  • Subjects should be Hong Kong residents
  • Subjects should be able to read Chinese

Exclusion criteria

  • Subjects who have vegan or vegetarian diets will be excluded
  • Subjects who have to follow special diets due to illnesses will be excluded
  • Subjects domestic helpers will also be excluded

Treatment and study plan

Priming intervention

Behavioral

The priming manipulation will be embedded in one computerized experiment to test the effect of three priming interventions on people's emotional reaction and their subsequent sustainable food selection. The priming conditions include priming with health benefits, environment benefits, and co-benefits of having sustainable diets, respectively. The cueing manipulation will be achieved by asking participants to complete a word-search exercise. Brief introduction will be provided to guide participants to choose words/statements that can indicate having a health and sustainable diet can have one of the three benefits: health benefits, environmental benefits or both benefits. The exercise will take ~2 min.

Primary outcomes

  1. Participants' choice of sustainable foods

    Time frame: Immediately after they are exposed to priming manipulation

    Measure name: Participants' food choice for sustainable food

    Measure tool: E-prime

    Measure process: During the computerized task, participants will examine a series of food products. Subsequently participants will be directed to simulated webpage for online shopping with all the foods they have examined available and they are required to buy three products they like most with the available budget provided.

    Measure units: Participants' actual food choice, whether they prefer choosing more sustainable food.

  2. Participants' facial expression

    Time frame: Immediately after they are exposed to priming manipulation

    Measure name: Participants' facial expression measured by pupil diameters

    Measure tool: E-prime with Tobii Pro eye trackers

    Measure units: Pupil diameters will be used to compare difference when participants view the less or more sustainable foods. The larger pupillary variations is an indicator of interest in the products.

  3. Participants' eye movement data

    Time frame: Immediately after they are exposed to priming manipulation

    Measure name: Participants' eye movement data

    Measure tool: E-prime with Tobii Pro eye trackers

    Measure units: Count frequency of looking at the environmentally friendly logo for each food category. Greater number indicates greater degree of attention and interest.

Secondary outcomes

  1. Social orientation value

    Time frame: Immediately after they complete the computerized task with priming manipulation

    Measure name: Social Orientation Value (SVO)

    Measure tool: survey questionnaire

    Measure units: Participants will be classified as prosocial, individualistic, or competitive if they made at least six or more choices consistent with one of the orientations.

  2. Pro-environmental values

    Time frame: Immediately after they complete the computerized task with priming manipulation

    Measure name: New Environmental Paradigm (a reduced 6-items version)

    Measure tool: Survey questionnaire

    Measure unit: All the responses will be measured on a 5-point agreement scale. Greater aggregated score indicates greater environmental concern.

Sponsors and collaborators

Lead sponsor

The University of Hong Kong

Other

Registry information

Official study title

Can we Prime Sustainable Food Choice? A Mix-methods Study

Important dates

Study start
2023
Primary completion
2023
Study completion
2023
First posted
Jun 22, 2021
Registry last updated
Jan 3, 2024

OpenTrials presents study information sourced from ClinicalTrials.gov. The official registry record should be consulted for the latest information.

View the official ClinicalTrials.gov record (opens in a new tab)

This listing is for discovery and informational purposes only. It is not medical advice, does not guarantee that a study is recruiting, and does not determine eligibility. Contact the study team and a qualified healthcare professional when considering participation.

Related clinical trials

Published trials that share one or more normalized conditions with this study.