Improving Healthy Eating in Children: Experimental Evidence

Gary Charness, Ramon Cobo-Reyes, Erik Eyster, Gabriel Katz, Ángela Sánchez and Matthias Sutter
Additional contact information
Erik Eyster: University of California, Santa Barbara
Gabriel Katz: University of Exeter
Ángela Sánchez: NYU and Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

No 13999, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We present a field experiment to study the effects of non-monetary incentives on healthy food choices of 282 children in elementary schools. Previous interventions have typically paid participants for healthy eating, but this often may not be feasible. We introduce a system where food items are graded based on their nutritional value, involving parents or classmates as change agents by providing them with information regarding the food choices of their children or friends. We find parents' involvement in the decision process to be particularly beneficial in boosting healthy food choices, with very strong results that persist months after the intervention.

Keywords: non-monetary incentives; parents; children; healthy eating; field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 82 pages
Date: 2020-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - revised version publishedd as 'Improving children’s food choices: Experimental evidence from the field: in: European Economic Review, 2023, 159, 104562

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp13999.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Improving healthy eating in children: Experimental evidence (2020)
Working Paper: Improving healthy eating in children: Experimental evidence (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp13999

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().