Incentives and Children's Dietary Choices: A Field Experiment in Primary Schools

Michèle Belot, Jonathan James () and Patrick Nolen
Additional contact information
Jonathan James: University of Bath

No 9424, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We conduct a field experiment in 31 primary schools in England to test the effectiveness of different temporary incentive schemes, an individual based incentive scheme and a competitive scheme, on increasing the choice and consumption of fruit and vegetables at lunchtime. The individual scheme has a weak positive effect whereas all pupils respond to positively to the competitive scheme. For our sample of interest, the competitive scheme increases choice of fruit and vegetables by 33% and consumption of fruit and vegetables by 48%, twice and three times as much as the individual incentive scheme, respectively. The positive effects generally carry over to the week immediately following the treatment but we find little evidence of any effects six months later. Our results show that incentives can work, at least temporarily, to increase healthy eating but there are large differences in effectiveness between schemes and across demographics such as age and gender.

Keywords: incentives; health; habits; child nutrition; field experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H51 H52 I18 I28 J13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 65 pages
Date: 2015-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-exp, nep-hea and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published - published in: Journal of Health Economics, 2016, 50, 213-229

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Related works:
Journal Article: Incentives and children's dietary choices: A field experiment in primary schools (2016)
Working Paper: Incentives and Children's Dietary Choices: A Field Experiment in Primary Schools (2014)
Working Paper: Incentives and Childrens's Dietary Choices: A Field Experiment in Primary Schools (2014)
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