Ultraprocessed Foods in Colombia
Ultraprocessed Foods in Colombia
The study seeks to examine how characters on packaging and warning labels affect purchase intentions and risk perception among children aged 12 to 17 in Colombia and, examine whether characters' presence weakens or reduces the perceived message effectiveness of the warning labels' impact. This will be a 2x2 between-subjects experiment manipulating presence or absence of characters and presence or absence of warning labels. Participants will be randomly assigned to 1 of 4 conditions in an online survey programmed in Qualtrics.
This study will employ a 2x2 between-subjects experimental design to investigate the independent and combined effects of characters and front-of-package warning labels on children's risk perceptions, purchase intentions and perceived message effectiveness regarding ultra-processed foods.
After parents or legal guardians provide informed consent and the children assent to participate, the survey platform (Qualtrics) will randomly assign each child to one of four experimental conditions:
Participants will complete the study online through a self-administered survey programmed in Qualtrics. This survey has a duration of approximately 15 minutes. Each child will be exposed to three fictional ultra-processed food products (cookies package, juice bottle, and chip bag), displayed in random order. The stimuli were developed to resemble common products in Colombia but without using real brands to avoid brand loyalty bias. Each product will be displayed with a label consistent with the child's assigned experimental condition.
Children will respond to a series of questions for each product individually. These questions will assess:
Inclusion Criteria:
Exclusion Criteria:
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