Point-of-consumption interventions to promote virtuous food choices of tourists with self-benefit or other-benefit appeals: a randomised field experiment

Abstract

There is very limited research on point-of-consumption/point-of-purchase interventions to promote more ecological and healthier food choices among tourists. To fill this gap, this paper analyses the impact of different factual appeals including information about taste (placebo), nutrients, carbon footprints and distance of transportation on food choices of tourists at hotel salad buffets. The research pursued a randomised field experiment in two Italian hotels adopting a 4X2 between-group experimental design (appeal content X endorsement). In addition to measuring the actual consumption of salad vegetables by weighting, a short survey was administered on 329 tourists. By comparing effectiveness of persuasion along a continuum of self-benefit vs other-benefit appeals, this experiment finds a higher effectiveness of pure self-benefit appeals stressing healthiness or mixed self/other-benefits stressing local origin, compared to other-benefits that focus on ecological friendliness. These findings are in line with the idea that egoistic and selfish-altruistic motivations dominate in tourism consumption over mere altruistic motivations.