El Departamento de Economía de la Facultad de Administración y Economía de la Universidad Diego Portales, tiene el agrado de invitar a la presentación del paper: “Nudging healthy food choices”.

Coautores: Cecilia Noboa (Universidad de la República) and Patricia Triunfo (Universidad de la República).

Abstract

This paper uses a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to analyze the impact of a healthy food nudge intervention on purchases made by 1,590 customers of a supermarket chain in Uruguay. We sent messages to customers through WhatsApp three times a week for eight weeks (between July and September 2020). Messages highlighted the benefits of cooking at home, eating mindfully and healthy (vegetables, fruits, healthy snacks, legumes, and fish), and included easy to implement tips and recommendations by well-known public figures. Results show that customers randomly assigned to the treatment group increased their purchases of healthy food by 8. We also observe an increase of 7% in the amount spent on unhealthy food, although we do not find an increase in the total amount of calories purchased, suggesting that customers are substituting higher calorie products for lower calorie ones. This is consistent with the reductions found in the amount of total fats and saturated fats purchased by some group of customers and with an increase in the purchases of sugar-free beverages. Effects are effects on households with children under the age of 12, customers with lower educational attainment, households with lower previous per capita purchases and households with healthier eating habits at baselines.

Effects disappear after the intervention is over, suggesting that the program works by making the value of a healthy nutrition more salient, but has no sufficient impact to change habits. Longer interventions or messages combined with stronger incentives may be needed to impact permanently on nutrition habits.

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