The Peer Effect on Dietary and Nutritional Cognition among Primary School Students

This study uses data from a 2018 survey of 11,384 students in five Chinese provinces to investigate the peer effect on students’ dietary and nutritional cognition. Children’s eating habits have an important impact on their growth and health. Studies have shown that students’ dietary behavior is mainly affected by their dietary and nutritional cognition. Therefore, studying the influencing factors of elementary school students’ cognition of diet and nutrition has become an important research question. However, there are few discussions about the impact of peers’ dietary and nutritional cognition on students’ cognition of diet and nutrition. Consequently, this paper studied the peer effect on students’ cognition of diet and nutrition. The results indicated that peers had a significant impact on the students’ dietary and nutritional cognition. The endogeneity problem was solved using peers’ parents’ dietary and nutritional cognition scores and average educational level as instrumental variables. The impact of peer cognition on diet and nutrition was heterogeneous among different groups. The significance and degree of the peer effect differed based on peer relations, gender, age and school. The results indicated that in addition to family, school, teachers and other factors, peers were an important influencing factor.