A QUASI-EXPERIMENT TO ASSESS THE CONSUMER AND INFORMATIONAL DETERMINANTS OF NUTRITION INFORMATION-PROCESSING ACTIVITIES - THE CASE OF THE NUTRITION LABELING AND EDUCATION ACT

The author reports a longitudinal quasi experiment that uses the imple mentation of the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (NLEA) to examin e the consumer and information determinants of nutrition information p rocessing activities. Over 1000 consumers from balanced demographic, g eographic, and site categories and across 20 different product categor ies were observed and surveyed within a supermarket setting. Findings suggest that consumers acquired and comprehended more nutrition inform ation following the introduction of the new labels. The NLEA did not, however, always influence these outcomes irrespective of individual co nsumer differences. Specifically, the new nutrition labels were compre hensible to consumers with varying levels of motivation and most types of nutrition knowledge. However, the new labels appeared to widen con sumer differences in terms of how much nutrition information was actua lly acquired-more motivated consumers and less skeptical consumers acq uired more information after the NLEA was passed. Finally, consistent with the NLEA's apparent ability to reduce comprehension differences, the new labels narrowed comprehension differences across healthy and u nhealthy products. In contrast, the NLEA widened differences in nutrit ion information acquisition in favor of unhealthy product categories. These results have implications for public health gains, as well as fo r the degree to which nutrition may become the basis for competition i n unhealthy product categories.