Halo effect of organic food on physical effort

Abstract

Abstract Previous research has demonstrated that consumers frequently experience a health halo effect from “organic” claims when evaluating food products. This bias can be highly inaccurate, leading to unintended, unhealthy consumer choices (e.g. underestimation of the calorie content, higher willingness to forgo exercise). In contrary to previous studies, our paper aims to highlight the halo effect specifically pertaining to the estimation of physical efforts to burn calories. In Study 1, we replicated a previous finding on the underestimation of the calories but did not observe any statistically varying effect in estimating “minutes to walk” across conditions (conventional vs. organic). In Study 2, we modified a dependent variable from “minutes to walk” to “intensity of exercise” but no statistical significance has emerged. In Study 3, we added a high-calorie condition given the assumption that it would trigger the halo bias. Nonetheless, consistent with the two previous studies, we observed no such bias in our final study. To sum up, our finding indicates that estimating physical effort may hinder the halo effect when it comes to organic food consumption scenarios. Keywords: halo effect, health halo, organic, food labeling, health claims, calorie estimation, physical effort estimation