Publication:

Health claims, nutritional labels and consumer preferences (experience in agricultural activities-olive oil specially)

The effect of nutritional labels and claims on consumer behavior is far from being a minor topic given that consumers’ are increasingly interested in healthy eating and products. It is often said that because consumers are susceptible to several factors during the purchase process, such as contextual and product attribute variables, their attitudes toward food labeling are changeable. However, much of the literature on consumers’ attitudes towards food labels has focused on studying the effects of these factors separately, and little is known about their interplay in the presence of food labels. Furthermore, there is a need for more indepth understanding of the emerging contextual factors that shape consumers’ attitudes towards food labels. Therefore, the objective of this thesis is to investigate the contextual and product attributes determinants of consumer attitudes towards food labels. To do so, consumers’ attitudes towards food labels were investigated through four empirical studies addressing the factors that influence these attitudes. The first study examines consumers’ personal (e.g., health consciousness and understanding nutritional labels) and product attributes factors (e.g., price and packaging) by analyzing how specifically the COVID-19 risk perception moderates such factors towards the use of nutritional labels and claims. Results show that there is an increase in the use of nutritional labels and claims in both countries during COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, COVID-19 risk perception enhances this health behavior by reducing the importance of product price and packaging. The second study investigates the mediating role of consumers’ attitudes towards health claims in the relationship between consumers’ interest in health claims and their willingness to pay for health claims in extra virgin olive oil. Furthermore, we explore the moderation effect of COVID-19 risk perception in the relationship between consumers’ interest in and attitudes towards health claims. Results confirm the mediating role of consumers’ attitudes towards health claims. Moreover, the relationship between consumers’ interest and their attitudes towards health claims was stronger when COVID-19 risk perception was higher. The third study presents an innovative approach using Twitter data to analyse how Twitter users’ characteristics (followers and followings) and their context (crisis conditions, community healthy eating and exercise habits) determine food safety-related sentiments during health crises. Results reveal that users with a high followings number express fewer positive sentiments, while it is the opposite for users with a high number of followers. COVID-19 cases exacerbate the propensity of communities with healthy eating habits to express fewer positive sentiments. Regarding community exercise habits, users within these communities tend to express fewer positive sentiments; however, this propensity is weakened by epidemic conditions. Finally, the fourth study focuses on the impact of health claims presented to the consumers along with the sensory attributes on their purchasing intentions, and examines to what extent sensory attributes mediate the relationship between the presence of health claims and consumers’ purchasing intentions. The sensory attributes taste and aftertaste partially mediate the relationship between the presence of health claims and consumers’ purchasing intentions. Furthermore, consumers rated the sensory attributes higher in the presence of health claims. This thesis contributes to the consumer behavior field by contextualizing the consumers’ attitudes towards food labels and providing valuable insights for understanding the personal, cultural, contextual and product attributes factors triggering consumer behavior toward food labels. Our findings highlight the importance of contextual factors as well as product attributes factors, which have consequences for improving food labels in a way that is compatible with customers' needs and preferences. This research enhances our understanding of how the interplay of different factors affect consumer’s attitudes toward food labels, which has implications for policies aimed at improving consumer welfare as individual that reflects on the wellbeing of the public health.