Arbeitspapier
Facilitating Healthy Dietary Habits: An Experiment with a Low Income Population
This paper tests an intervention aimed at facilitating (cognitively) the adoption of healthy dietary habits. We provide easy-to-understand information about the risks of developing diabetes or heart diseases and give easy-to-follow dietary recommendations to minimize these risks. We implement two variations, one consisting of generic information, the other consisting of information tailored to the individual, the latter resembling newly developed on-line health assessment tools. On top of the information treatment, we implement a second experimental variation nudging people into spending more time thinking about their dietary choices. We find evidence that the information intervention leads to healthier choices in the short run, but mostly in the generic treatment. Surprisingly, we find that people are on average pessimistic about their health, and therefore receive good news on average when the information is tailored to them. We find no evidence that increasing the time available to make choices leads to healthier choices, and find no evidence of long-term changes in habits. These results do not support a bounded rationality explanation for poor dietary choices.
- Language
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Englisch
- Bibliographic citation
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Series: IZA Discussion Papers ; No. 12675
- Classification
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Wirtschaft
Health Behavior
Health: Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
National Government Expenditures and Health
Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
- Subject
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health risks
dietary habits
bounded rationality
heuristics
information
time availability
laboratory experiments
- Event
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Geistige Schöpfung
- (who)
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Belot, Michèle
James, Jonathan
Spiteri, Jonathan
- Event
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Veröffentlichung
- (who)
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Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
- (where)
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Bonn
- (when)
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2019
- Handle
- Last update
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10.03.2025, 11:44 AM CET
Data provider
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. If you have any questions about the object, please contact the data provider.
Object type
- Arbeitspapier
Associated
- Belot, Michèle
- James, Jonathan
- Spiteri, Jonathan
- Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
Time of origin
- 2019
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