NCT04716010

Developing and Evaluating Product Messaging

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 4,160 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Purpose: To assess the impact of taxes, warnings, and a combination of taxes and warnings on US adults' decisions to purchase products that contain red meat in an online grocery store. Procedures (methods): Participants will be recruited from Prime Panels (an online panel research company). Following online consent, participants will be assigned to one of four trial arms: 1) Control (no warning and no tax), 2) Warnings (all products that contain red meat have a health warning and environmental warning), 3) Tax (30% tax on products that contain red meat), and 4) Combined warning and tax (all products that contain red meat will have the two warnings and a 30% tax). Then, participant will enter an online grocery store reflecting their assigned arm. The participant will be instructed to complete a shopping task in the online grocery store. After completing the shopping task, participants will be redirected to an online survey and answer a series of questions about the shopping task, labels (excluding tax and control groups), and taxes (excluding warning and control groups). Questions will also include standard demographic and health related variables.

Detailed description

Participants will be recruited from Prime Panels (an online panel research company). Following online consent, participants will be randomly assigned to one of four trial arms affecting the appearance of an online grocery store. Once in the online grocery store, participants will complete a shopping task. The participants will have 9 specified items to add to their shopping cart (1 pizza, 1 burrito, Burger patties \[meat or vegetarian\], Breakfast sausages \[meat or vegetarian\], 1 frozen individual meal, 1 loaf of bread, 1 sandwich filling \[for example, ham, turkey, or peanut butter\], 1 pack of tortillas, 1 taco filling \[for example, steak, chicken, or beans\]). Participants will be informed that they will not be spending any of their own money to complete the shopping task. After completing the shopping task, participants will be redirected to a survey. They will provide self-reported responses to survey questions (e.g. perceived healthfulness from eating red meat, perceived risk of cancer from eating red meat, thinking about the health/environmental harms of food products). Participants will also answer demographic and health related questions.

Conditions

• Cancer of Colon
• Cancer of Rectum

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Control	Participants will complete a shopping task in the online grocery store, and the products that contain red meat will not have warning labels or a 30% increase in price.
OTHER	Warning Labels	While completing the shopping task in the online grocery store, the health and environmental warning labels will appear next to the image of every product that contains red meat.
OTHER	Tax	While completing the shopping task in the online grocery store, all products containing red meat will have a 30% increase in price.
OTHER	Combined Warning Labels and Tax	While completing the shopping task in the online grocery store, all products containing red meat will have the health and environmental warning labels appear next to the product image and a 30% increase in price.

Timeline

• Start date: 2021-10-18
• Primary completion: 2021-10-28
• Completion: 2021-10-28
• First posted: 2021-01-20
• Last updated: 2023-08-18
• Results posted: 2022-09-09

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United States