Essays on Information Evaluation for Food Product Choices through Food Literacy Apps
Join Zoom Meeting
https://nus-sg.zoom.us/j/89029238957?pwd=SVYwR1hjTExQWU9USkRVOUtBYWRQdz09
Meeting ID: 890 2923 8957
Password: 710485
Abstract:
With the proliferation of mobile apps to promote healthy diets, including food literacy apps, it is important to understand the influence of information evaluation presented through these apps on users' decisions. However, little attention has been devoted to investigating the relative importance of different types of information cues and how consumers integrate the information cues coupled with the complex attributes of food products in their information evaluation. This dissertation contributes to the information processing literature by showing the significance of authority and social proof cues on food product choices and taking a novel approach by incorporating the attributes of products to explain the underlying mechanism in essay 1 and contributes to the perspectives of reference-dependent preference in prospect theory by explaining why consumers accept uncertainty in their food product choice when losses appear larger than the gains to their health in essay 2.
The first essay, "The Effects of Digital Information Cues on Food Product Choices across Snack vs. Organic Foods," examines how authority and social proof cues in food literacy apps affect users' food product choices from a perspective of information processing theory. Furthermore, building on the categorization of SEC attributes of consumer products, we examine the moderating effect of SEC attributes on food product choices. First, employing a regression discontinuity design (RDD) as an identification strategy, the results confirm the significant positive effect of authority cue on food choices and the positive interaction effect of the products with credence attributes on the relationship between authority cue and the choices. Second, using a panel regression model, we find that the products with credence attributes are more likely to be chosen when a favorable authority cue is given, while the products with experience attributes are more likely to be chosen given a higher volume of a social proof cue. By uncovering the relationship between information cues' provision and product choices, this study makes a novel contribution by further incorporating the influence of SEC attributes on food product choices.
In the second essay, "Is Diversity of Opinion Better? The Effects of Disagreement in User Reviews on Food Product Choices," we investigate how consumers integrate expert grade together with the disagreement in other users' reviews into their evaluation of food products. Building on a reference-dependent preference perspective of prospect theory, which suggests that individuals tend to prefer uncertainty when a decision outcome is framed as a loss, this study explains why consumers accept uncertainty (i.e., a higher degree of disagreement in user reviews in their decision-making) in their food product choice when losses appear larger than the gains to their health. The results show that the effects of disagreement in the reviews have swayed by a reference point of expert grade. Consumers underweight the degree of disagreement in the user reviews when expert grade confirms the gains to their health but overweight the disagreement in user reviews when expert grade indicates losses to their health. This study contributes to broader research on the positive aspects of disagreement from the loss-framing of prospect theory.
Overall, this dissertation contributes to the literature on users' information processing when evaluating food product choices by offering theoretical explanations and empirical evidence on the influence of providing digital information through a food literacy app. The results suggest that consumers' information evaluation partially depends on the food product attributes and a reference point on the product. From a practical perspective, this dissertation provides significant implications for key stakeholders, such as app providers, food experts, and government authorities, by providing guidance to develop policies and design food literacy mobile apps for promoting healthy eating among the public.