Add a Legume to Your Cart

Add a Legume to Your Cart: The Role of Tailored Communication in Promoting Healthier and More Sustainable Food Purchasing - A Study Within the Framework of the PNRR 10 ON FOODS Partnership

This study aims to evaluate the efficacy of a healthy diet promotion intervention focused on increasing legume consumption. The intervention is delivered via mobile application in a sample drawn from the healthy adult population.

This study investigates the effects of different communication strategies on behavioral change. The intervention is designed to promote legume consumption. After compiling different profiling and assessment questionnaires, participants watch one of three different possible type of brief video performed by professional actors that discuss the benefits of eating more legumes in terms of health and environmental benefits. Then, with an ad-hoc designed task, they do a simulated grocery shopping and an automatic task to assess approach-avoidance tendency towards meat vs. legumes dishes. Finally, explicit attitudes are assessed.

Group differences are explored across three experimental conditions, which vary in the communication strategies. Group 1 watches a video with an educational communicative style and content (EDUCATIONAL), group watches a video presented with a persuasive style, and general content (PERSUASIVE), while group 3 watches a persuasive video with tailored content, based on the profiling phase (TAILORED).

The primary aim of the study is to evaluate the impact of these different communication strategies on attitudes and legume purchase. Secondary aims include the investigation of differences in other unspecific purchases.

Inclusion Criteria:

• be university students (enrolled in a bachelor's degree, master's degree/specialized degree/single-cycle degree program, or postgraduate education);
• own a smartphone.

Exclusion Criteria:

• consume an adequate amount of legumes (> 3 servings);
• suffer from one or more conditions that could represent a contraindication to the consumption of certain specific categories of legumes, such as favism, allergies, irritable bowel syndrome, short bowel syndrome and/or leaky gut, forms of intestinal dysbiosis, or other intestinal disorders.