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Perceptions of social norms around healthy and environmentally-friendly food choices: Linking the role of referent groups to behavior

Referent groups can moderate the perception of social norms and individuals’ likelihood to model these norms in food choice contexts, including vegetable intake and reduced meat consumption. The present study investigated whether having a close vs. a distant social group as the referent changed perc...

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Autores principales: Çoker, Elif Naz, Jebb, Susan A., Stewart, Cristina, Clark, Michael, Pechey, Rachel
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9611198/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36312106
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.974830
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author Çoker, Elif Naz
Jebb, Susan A.
Stewart, Cristina
Clark, Michael
Pechey, Rachel
author_facet Çoker, Elif Naz
Jebb, Susan A.
Stewart, Cristina
Clark, Michael
Pechey, Rachel
author_sort Çoker, Elif Naz
collection PubMed
description Referent groups can moderate the perception of social norms and individuals’ likelihood to model these norms in food choice contexts, including vegetable intake and reduced meat consumption. The present study investigated whether having a close vs. a distant social group as the referent changed perceptions of social norms around making healthy and eco-friendly food choices. It also assessed whether these changes were associated with a difference in the health and environmental impacts of food choice in a virtual grocery shopping task. A nationally representative sample of UK adults (N = 2,488) reported their perceptions of making healthy and eco-friendly food choices being the norm among people they share meals with (close referent group) and most people in the UK (distant referent group). The former was more commonly perceived to be making both healthy (Z = −12.0, p < 0.001) and eco-friendly (Z = −13.27, p < 0.001) food choices than the latter. Perceptions of norms referring to the close group were significantly associated with the environmental (β = −0.90, 95% CIs: −1.49, −0.28) and health (β = −0.38 p < 0.05, 95% CIs: −0.68, −0.08) impacts of participants’ food choices in a virtual shopping task. No such relationship was found for norms referring to the distant group for both environmental (β =0.43, p > 0.05, 95% CIs: −1.12, 0.25) and health (β = −0.06, p > 0.05, 95% CIs: −0.37, 0.25) impacts. Framing social norms around making healthy and eco-friendly food choices to refer to a close referent group may change their perceptions and ability to encourage sustainable and healthy food purchasing.
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spelling pubmed-96111982022-10-28 Perceptions of social norms around healthy and environmentally-friendly food choices: Linking the role of referent groups to behavior Çoker, Elif Naz Jebb, Susan A. Stewart, Cristina Clark, Michael Pechey, Rachel Front Psychol Psychology Referent groups can moderate the perception of social norms and individuals’ likelihood to model these norms in food choice contexts, including vegetable intake and reduced meat consumption. The present study investigated whether having a close vs. a distant social group as the referent changed perceptions of social norms around making healthy and eco-friendly food choices. It also assessed whether these changes were associated with a difference in the health and environmental impacts of food choice in a virtual grocery shopping task. A nationally representative sample of UK adults (N = 2,488) reported their perceptions of making healthy and eco-friendly food choices being the norm among people they share meals with (close referent group) and most people in the UK (distant referent group). The former was more commonly perceived to be making both healthy (Z = −12.0, p < 0.001) and eco-friendly (Z = −13.27, p < 0.001) food choices than the latter. Perceptions of norms referring to the close group were significantly associated with the environmental (β = −0.90, 95% CIs: −1.49, −0.28) and health (β = −0.38 p < 0.05, 95% CIs: −0.68, −0.08) impacts of participants’ food choices in a virtual shopping task. No such relationship was found for norms referring to the distant group for both environmental (β =0.43, p > 0.05, 95% CIs: −1.12, 0.25) and health (β = −0.06, p > 0.05, 95% CIs: −0.37, 0.25) impacts. Framing social norms around making healthy and eco-friendly food choices to refer to a close referent group may change their perceptions and ability to encourage sustainable and healthy food purchasing. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-10-13 /pmc/articles/PMC9611198/ /pubmed/36312106 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.974830 Text en Copyright © 2022 Çoker, Jebb, Stewart, Clark and Pechey. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Çoker, Elif Naz
Jebb, Susan A.
Stewart, Cristina
Clark, Michael
Pechey, Rachel
Perceptions of social norms around healthy and environmentally-friendly food choices: Linking the role of referent groups to behavior
title Perceptions of social norms around healthy and environmentally-friendly food choices: Linking the role of referent groups to behavior
title_full Perceptions of social norms around healthy and environmentally-friendly food choices: Linking the role of referent groups to behavior
title_fullStr Perceptions of social norms around healthy and environmentally-friendly food choices: Linking the role of referent groups to behavior
title_full_unstemmed Perceptions of social norms around healthy and environmentally-friendly food choices: Linking the role of referent groups to behavior
title_short Perceptions of social norms around healthy and environmentally-friendly food choices: Linking the role of referent groups to behavior
title_sort perceptions of social norms around healthy and environmentally-friendly food choices: linking the role of referent groups to behavior
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9611198/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36312106
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.974830
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