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Attract the best: The attraction effect as an effective strategy to enhance healthy choices
Every day, people make many food decisions without thinking, repeatedly falling for the unhealthy option instead of the healthy option. While making these mindless decisions, people often rely on heuristics. In this paper, we demonstrate that these heuristics can be exploited to nudge consumers towa...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8568290/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34735536 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259521 |
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author | van den Enden, Gitta Geyskens, Kelly |
author_facet | van den Enden, Gitta Geyskens, Kelly |
author_sort | van den Enden, Gitta |
collection | PubMed |
description | Every day, people make many food decisions without thinking, repeatedly falling for the unhealthy option instead of the healthy option. While making these mindless decisions, people often rely on heuristics. In this paper, we demonstrate that these heuristics can be exploited to nudge consumers towards healthy alternatives. Specifically, we explore how the attraction effect (i.e., adding a decoy to a choice set) can nudge people to choose a healthy snack. The results of our choice experiment indicate that adding a decoy (i.e., a less attractive food alternative) to a self-control situation (i.e., choosing between a healthy and an unhealthy food alternative) can help people maintain self-control and choose the healthy option. This mixed choice set thus nudges people towards the healthy option. Moreover, our results show differential effects of the attraction effect depending on the (un)healthiness of the products in the choice set. Specifically, the attraction effect is prominent when the choice set consists of unhealthy products only (i.e., the unhealthy choice set), but not in the choice set that consists of only healthy products (i.e., healthy choice set). Importantly, our results indicate when the attraction effect can exploit consumers’ heuristics to help them make better, healthier food choices. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8568290 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-85682902021-11-05 Attract the best: The attraction effect as an effective strategy to enhance healthy choices van den Enden, Gitta Geyskens, Kelly PLoS One Research Article Every day, people make many food decisions without thinking, repeatedly falling for the unhealthy option instead of the healthy option. While making these mindless decisions, people often rely on heuristics. In this paper, we demonstrate that these heuristics can be exploited to nudge consumers towards healthy alternatives. Specifically, we explore how the attraction effect (i.e., adding a decoy to a choice set) can nudge people to choose a healthy snack. The results of our choice experiment indicate that adding a decoy (i.e., a less attractive food alternative) to a self-control situation (i.e., choosing between a healthy and an unhealthy food alternative) can help people maintain self-control and choose the healthy option. This mixed choice set thus nudges people towards the healthy option. Moreover, our results show differential effects of the attraction effect depending on the (un)healthiness of the products in the choice set. Specifically, the attraction effect is prominent when the choice set consists of unhealthy products only (i.e., the unhealthy choice set), but not in the choice set that consists of only healthy products (i.e., healthy choice set). Importantly, our results indicate when the attraction effect can exploit consumers’ heuristics to help them make better, healthier food choices. Public Library of Science 2021-11-04 /pmc/articles/PMC8568290/ /pubmed/34735536 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259521 Text en © 2021 van den Enden, Geyskens https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article van den Enden, Gitta Geyskens, Kelly Attract the best: The attraction effect as an effective strategy to enhance healthy choices |
title | Attract the best: The attraction effect as an effective strategy to enhance healthy choices |
title_full | Attract the best: The attraction effect as an effective strategy to enhance healthy choices |
title_fullStr | Attract the best: The attraction effect as an effective strategy to enhance healthy choices |
title_full_unstemmed | Attract the best: The attraction effect as an effective strategy to enhance healthy choices |
title_short | Attract the best: The attraction effect as an effective strategy to enhance healthy choices |
title_sort | attract the best: the attraction effect as an effective strategy to enhance healthy choices |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8568290/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34735536 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259521 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT vandenendengitta attractthebesttheattractioneffectasaneffectivestrategytoenhancehealthychoices AT geyskenskelly attractthebesttheattractioneffectasaneffectivestrategytoenhancehealthychoices |