We meta-analyze field studies published over the past 15 years to examine whether information nudges promote environmentally sustainable food choices in real-world settings, which types of information nudges elicit stronger behavioral responses, and under what conditions their effects vary. Drawing on 143 effect sizes from 63 field studies across 45 articles, we find that, on average, information nudges yield a modest but significant effect in promoting pro-environmental food choices. We classify information nudges into five common types: descriptive sustainability labeling, evaluative sustainability labeling, social norms, hedonic appeals, and calls for sustainable food choices. There is no clear evidence that any of the five types produces larger effects than the others. Instead, the results indicate that the effects of information nudges vary by study design, duration, year of implementation, setting, and outcome measure. Specifically, nudge effects appear larger in studies using pre-post designs with a control group than in those without a control group, in studies with shorter intervention durations, in studies conducted before 2020 than in those conducted between 2020 and 2025, and in studies implemented in off-site eateries than in on-site cafeterias. Information nudges also tend to be more effective in reducing unsustainable food choices than in increasing sustainable ones. Nevertheless, the effect estimates remain modest across all examined moderator categories.

We examine whether providing free school meals to all students causes changes in out-of-school suspensions for schools adopting those policies in the United States. Using updated data and modern difference-in-differences methods that account for staggered adoption, we show suspensions fall by approximately 10% in elementary schools and 6% in middle and high schools, with larger effects in schools that previously served fewer students eligible for free and reduced-price meals in preadoption periods. These findings contrast with earlier null results, primarily due to better methods that account for staggered program adoption as opposed to the updated dataset.

In this study, we investigate the mental well-being of agricultural economics PhD students at 33 universities in the United States. Analysis of our survey data reveals that about 40% of respondents reported experiencing symptoms indicative of depression, anxiety, or suicidal ideation. Although most participants recognized the meaningfulness of their work, achieving a satisfactory work-life balance emerged as a prominent concern. Notably, stress levels were consistent across departments irrespective of their rankings. Furthermore, our examination uncovers some racial disparities: Hispanic and White students exhibited a higher prevalence of mental health issues but were more inclined to seek treatment, while Asian and Black students reported lower prevalence but faced challenges accessing support services.

Biodegradable plastics are slowly being introduced in the food industry to protect the environment, but consumer willingness to pay a premium remains uncertain. This study uses a choice experiment and latent class logit model to assess consumers' valuation for biodegradable plastic packaging and examines the impact of different information types on the willingness to pay estimates. Findings suggest that consumers are willing to pay a premium ($1.32) for biodegradable packaging over conventional options, with additional information increasing the willingness to pay by over $0.50. These results imply that higher prices may not deter consumers from choosing biodegradable plastic packaging.

Suboptimal diets contribute significantly to diet-related chronic diseases and mortality in the United States. To address this, Front-of-Pack (FOP) labels have been proposed to help consumers make healthier food choices. In 2022, the FDA introduced 15 potential health labels aimed at providing critical information and nudging consumers toward healthier food choices, yet the effects of these labels on consumer preferences remain ambiguous. Using the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak mechanism in a laboratory experiment, this study investigates the influence of health and taste labels, and information provision, on consumer willingness to pay (WTP) for yogurt qualifying for the FDA-endorsed health label. Findings indicate that health labels alone reduce WTP, potentially due to perceived compromises on taste and skepticism towards health claims. However, the addition of credible information regarding FDA qualification mitigates these negative effects. Exploratory subsample analyses reveal that the health label is discounted among consumers who are nutritionally knowledgeable, health-conscious, pleasure driven, and frequent label users. However, providing information about the health label mitigates this discount among the former three types of consumers. The study underscores the importance of providing credible, detailed information and targeted educational campaigns to enhance the effectiveness of health labels. These insights can inform policymakers and stakeholders in developing more effective food labeling strategies to promote healthier dietary choices and improve public health outcomes. By unraveling the nuances of how consumers respond to health and taste labels, our research offers valuable guidance for designing labeling strategies that resonate with consumer values and preferences.

Consumer misperception and misinterpretation of food labels can lead to consumers not buying a product or purchasing products that do not align with their environmental or sustainability interests. Consumer purchasing behavior can be explained by looking at consumer food values or food quality attributes. This study aimed to (a) determine the effect label information has on consumer preference shares for selected sustainability-related food labels and (b) if correlations exist between food labels and food values. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the comprehension of 12 different labels and identify how food labels relate to food value preferences. Responses from the best-worst scaling experiment of food value and environmental food label choice sets were analyzed using the random parameter logit model. Results reveal preference shares changed for each label as more information was provided to the respondents about the various labels included in the study. These findings should support food policy efforts requiring strict, clear label standards. Food labels should represent the food's core food values to increase consumer preference for the product. These findings also further support the need for efforts to increase consumer knowledge and understanding of the labels on food packaging.

The escalating effects of climate change make it important to find ways to offset the carbon burden. One way to do so is to reduce beef consumption, since cattle production creates large amounts of greenhouse gases, which contribute to global warming and climate change. In this study, we explore US consumers’ perceptions of alternative beef products. Specifically, we test the effects of three types of earmark information on consumers’ valuation of a beef carbon tax related to hamburger meat through two labeled discrete choice experiments. Our results show that earmark information can be effective in reducing the negative impact of an environmental tax on consumers’ willingness to pay for beef products. This study contributes to a better understanding of how consumers would bear environmental taxes for beef and alternative products.

Using bird-friendly coffee as an example, we investigated how sustainability information affects willingness to pay directly, to what extent this effect is mediated by taste perception and whether the effect of the sustainability information on taste perception is due to positive affect and/or due to a feeling of moral satisfaction. Stability of these effects was studied across two coffee tastings. Participants tasted two coffees prepared from two birdfriendly coffees, either after being informed about bird-friendly coffee and that the coffees they were about to taste were bird-friendly or in a control condition where tasting was blind. After each tasting, participants were asked to indicate their willingness to pay for the coffee using the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak procedure. Taste perception, moral satisfaction with drinking the coffee, and affective valence were recorded using questionnaires. Emotional responses were also identified by analyzing facial expressions. Results indicated that when tasting the first coffee served, information about the bird-friendly production affected willingness to pay (WTP) positively both directly and mediated by taste perception, where the effect of the information on taste perception was in turn mediated by affect valence and moral satisfaction. When tasting the second coffee served, however, a positive impact on taste perception via increased moral satisfaction and a negative taste inference from the information resulted in a net zero effect of the information on WTP. The results provide new insights on how sustainability information can affect WTP via effects on taste perception and the dynamics of these effects over repeated choice and consumption situations.

Profitability, yield, and fertilizer use are compared across three different potassium (K) fertilizer rate recommendation ideologies. Existing agronomic, "build and maintain" rate recommendations (KE) are compared to profit-maximizing rates with and without taking long-run soil-test K (STK) implications into account. Regardless of starting STK, K use equilibrated over the course of 3 years irrespective of ideology. Since taking long-run STK into account did not alter ending STK and only led to a miniscule yield effect, we encourage producers to use annual profit-maximizing K rates that were 3-11% lower than KE rates and generated more profit with minimal yield loss.

This study analyzes consumers' valuation for a natural coating that extends the shelf life of produce. Specifically, we examine the effect of providing information about the natural coating's ability to reduce food waste on consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) using bananas and tomatoes as products of interest. We found higher WTP among participants provided with the information. Our study underscores the importance of cognitive and noncognitive factors in understanding the implications of food-waste related interventions. We also used Query Theory to explore participants' thought processes. The results indicate that those provided with the information generated more value-increasing thoughts than those not provided with the information.

The effects of mindfulness interventions on food purchases and consumption are popular topics. Recent studies focus on mindfulness interventions that target overweight and obese populations. We measure the effects of a guided 5-minute body scan mindfulness intervention on ‘healthier’ food purchases in an online experiment. Specifically, we use a choice experiment approach with a between-subject design to evaluate participants’ choices of unhealthy/healthier foods. Results revealed the mindfulness intervention effectively increased state mindfulness in the treatment group. The treatment had a positive and significant effect on the overweight subsample. Additionally, we found nutrition knowledge to have a positive and significant effect on ‘healthier’ food choices across three regression models and various subsamples. Our findings suggest that mindfulness interventions may be a useful, low-cost alternative to current weight loss strategies, especially for overweight and obese individuals. In addition, our findings point to the importance of nutrition knowledge in promoting ‘healthier’ food choices.

Background: Many states have adopted school-based BMI screening or surveillance programs in an effort to address high rates of childhood obesity, some of which involve provision of confidential BMI reports to parents. While there is evidence that parents are attuned to information in the reports, there is less evidence showing that the reports are effective in preventing excess childhood weight gain. Methods: Data from Arkansas, the state with the nation's first and longest running and BMI screening program, were used to measure the impact of BMI reports. This was done through a regression discontinuity design that compared future BMI z-scores among children falling within a narrow band around the obese and overweight thresholds. We derived the effects of BMI reports by comparing students who received different types of reports around the relevant threshold. Results: While we are unable to detect any differences in BMI z-scores between the children who received the overweight report and the children who received the healthy weight report, we detected some differences between children who received the obese report and children who received the overweight report. These findings hold across subsamples by age, minority status, and school meal status. Conclusions: Based on these data, overweight or obese reports to do not meaningfully impact future BMI z-scores. This may be due, in part, to the format of parental reports, which may dampen the surprise element of an overweight or obese report.

Prevailing agricultural systems dominated by annual crop monocultures, and the landscapes that contain them, lack resilience and multifunctionality. They are vulnerable to extreme weather events, contribute to degradation of soil, water, and air quality, reduce biodiversity, and negatively impact human health, social engagement, and equity. To achieve greater resilience, stability, and multiple ecosystem services therein, and to improve socioeconomic outcomes, we propose a practical framework to gain multifunctionality at multiple scales. This framework includes forages within agroecosystems that have the essential structural features of diversity, perenniality, and circularity. These three structural features are associated with increased resilience, stability, and provision of several ecosystem services, which in turn improve human health and socioeconomic outcomes. This framework improves understanding of, and access to, tools and materials for promoting the adoption of diverse circular agroecosystems with perennial forages. Application of this framework can result in land transformations that solve sustainability challenges in agriculture if policy, economic, and social barriers can be overcome by a transdisciplinary process of equitable knowledge production.

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly increased food insecurity despite emergency legislation that put more resources into food assistance programs, increased unemployment benefits, and provided stimulus payments. We conducted a survey in the US on food insecurity among low-income Americans during the early months of the pandemic. While we cannot estimate causal effects, we are able to show important associations between food insecurity and nutritional and economic assistance that highlight the need to ensure that those newly at risk for food insecurity are able to connect to resources. For example, our results indicate that those who lost jobs due to the pandemic reported the highest level of food insecurity and also the lowest engagement with food assistance programs. The SNAP expansion appears to be important only among groups with higher levels of income stability including non-minority households and those not experiencing a job loss. Thus, the SNAP expansion may not have had a meaningful impact on those most at risk for food insecurity. Finally, our data highlight the importance of school meal programs during normal times. Those who took advantage of school meals before the outbreak are more likely to have experienced food insecurity during the pandemic-related school closures.

Prior research has established that it is valuable for members to have strong organizational identification with nonprofit service organizations. However, research has not examined whether and how members are influenced by other members of a nonprofit. This paper analyzes how peer identification influences member retention and donations using survey data and actual member behavior. It distinguishes identification with the organization from identification with peers. The theory-based econometric model shows that the effect of a member’s peer and organizational identification on the likelihood of he/she will remain a member depends on the member’s relationship stage. Organizational identification has a large effect on member retention in the earlier periods of membership. However, for members of eight years or more, the favorable effect of peer identification becomes larger. Results also show that peer identification has a negative impact on donations whereas organizational identification has a positive effect regardless of stage of the member-nonprofit relationship. This paper also introduces a new construct, peer identity overlap, which influences peer identification. The article discusses how nonprofit service organizations can foster support and affirmation among members, value alignment among members, peer identity overlap, and organizational identification, as well as manage different stages of the relationship.

Objective To explore the association between food insecurity and mental health outcomes among low-income Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods We conducted a survey of 2714 low-income respondents nationwide from June 29, 2020 to July 21, 2020. A proportional odds logit model was employed to estimate the associations between food insecurity and anxiety and between food insecurity and depression. Results Food insecurity is associated with a 257% higher risk of anxiety and a 253% higher risk of depression. Losing a job during the pandemic is associated with a 32% increase in risk for anxiety and a 27% increase in risk for depression. Conclusions Food insecurity caused by the pandemic was associated with increased risk of mental illness. The relative risk of mental illness from being food insecure is almost three-fold that of losing a job during the pandemic. Public health measures should focus on getting direct subsidies of food purchases to poor families, especially families with children. They should also reduce the stigma and shame that is associated with accepting charitable foods.

Choice experiments have been extensively used in many stated preference studies and disciplines. In order to give external validity to stated preferences, participants must behave the same in an experiment setting as they do in reality. The difference between a decision made in a real experiment and a hypothetical experiment is commonly attributed to "hypothetical bias." In this paper, we investigate whether virtual reality can reduce hypothetical bias in choice experiments. We conducted a set of experiments using the Food and Drug Administration's new Nutrition Facts Label for yogurts. Participants were randomly assigned to non-hypothetical and hypothetical experiments, which differed in terms of visual presentations of the product in question: text, picture, and a virtual grocery store. Given the absence of real markets for the new label at the time of the research, we approximate the real market with a binding choice in our non-hypothetical experiments. Our results suggest that although the hypothetical bias with virtual reality is not statistically significantly different from those using text or picture, it is the smallest. Among participants who did not exhibit high simulator discomfort, results suggest that virtual reality can significantly reduce hypothetical bias in choice experiments.

BACKGROUND:The analysis of correlated responses obtained one at a time in survey data is not as informative or as useful as modeling them simultaneously. Simultaneous modeling allows for the opportunity to evaluate the system in a more pragmatic form rather than to allow for responses that assumedly originated in isolation.METHODS:This research uses the Mozambique National Survey data to demonstrate the benefits of simultaneous modeling on blood test results, knowledge of HIV/AIDS, and awareness of an HIV/AIDS campaign. This simultaneous modeling also addresses the correlation inherent due to the hierarchical structure in the data collection.RESULTS:Employment and self-perceived risk of HIV/AIDS have different impact on blood test, awareness of an HIV/AIDS campaign, and knowledge of HIV/AIDS when examined simultaneously as opposed to separate modeling.CONCLUSION:Simultaneous modeling of correlated responses improves the reliability of the estimates. More importantly, it provides an opportunity to engage in cost-saving decisions when designing future surveys and make better health policies.

Background It is well known that it is more reliable to investigate the effects of several covariates simultaneously rather than one at time. Similarly, it is more informative to model responses simultaneously, as more often than not, the multiple responses from the same subject are correlated. This is particularly true in the analysis of Mozambique survey data from 2009 and 2018. Method A multiple response predictive model for testing positive for HIV and having sufficient HIV knowledge is modeled to 2009 and 2018 survey data with the use of Bayes estimates. These data are obtained through a hierarchical data structure. The model allows one to address the change in the response to HIV, as it relates to morbidity and to HIV knowledge in Mozambique in the fight against the disease in the last decade. Results A more affluent resident is more likely to test positive, more likely to be more knowledgeable about the disease. Whereas, individuals practicing the Islam faith are less likely to test positive but also less likely to be knowledgeable about the disease. Education, while still a factor, has declined in its impact on testing positive for HIV or being knowledgeable about HIV. Females are more likely to test positive but more likely to be knowledgeable about the disease than men. The rate of impact of affluence on knowledge has increased in the past decade. Marital status (cohabitating or married) showed no impact on the knowledge of the disease. Age had no impact on knowledge suggesting that the message is getting to resident. Conclusions A joint Bayes modeling of correlated binary (testing positive and knowledge about the disease) responses, while accounting for the hierarchy of the data collection, presents an opportunity to extract the extra variation before allocating the variation on the responses as the due of the covariates. The fight against HIV in Mozambique seems to be succeeding. Some knowledge is common among all ages, and Islam religion has a positive effect. While education still shows an influence on the binary responses, it has declined over the last decade.