NCT02603263

The Effect of a Descriptive Norm Promoting Vegetable Selection in a Workplace Restaurant Setting: an Observational Study

The Effect of a Descriptive Norm Promoting Vegetable Selection in a Workplace

• Status: Completed
• Phase: —
• Study type: Observational
• Enrollment: 9,445 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of Birmingham · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: —
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Encouraging individuals to eat fruit and vegetables is difficult. However, recent evidence suggests that using social-based information might help. For instance, it has been shown that if people think that others are eating lots of fruit and vegetables, that they will consume more food to match the 'norm'.The purpose of this study was to determine whether social norm messages could be used to enhance vegetable purchases in workplace restaurants, in an observational study.

Detailed description

In this study the investigators hypothesised that placing posters containing social norm messages promoting vegetable consumption in three workplace restaurants, would increase the purchase of meals with vegetables, and that this effect would be sustained over time. The investigators recruited three restaurants to this study. For two weeks (Pre-intervention phase) the investigators used till receipts to monitor the number of meals sold with or without vegetables at baseline. For the following two weeks (Intervention phase) the investigators placed social norms posters around the three restaurants, while continuing to collect till receipts. After this, the posters were removed, and receipts were monitored for a final two weeks (Post-intervention).

Conditions

• Eating Behaviour

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Social Norms Poster	A poster containing a social norms message: "Most people here choose to eat vegetables with their lunch"

Timeline

• Start date: 2015-02-01
• Primary completion: 2015-08-01
• Completion: 2015-08-01
• First posted: 2015-11-11
• Last updated: 2015-11-11

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United Kingdom