Eighth International Conference on Health, Wellness & Society

Abstract

This research investigates how provision of calories per serving information on serving size labels affects snack consumption quantity. This is particularly timely because of increasing public policy and food manufacturer interest in the effects of prominent presentation of nutrition information on consumer packaged foods (e.g., front-of-package labels; U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) 2017) and because the FDA is mandating increases in the typically small stated serving sizes for many consumer packaged foods. Consistent with these issues of concern to both the FDA and food manufacturers, we focus on a deeper understanding of how consumers process and use two important pieces of information that can be presented on the fronts of packaged foods: serving size and calories per serving information. We specifically focus on changes in the quantity of food consumed based on varying the serving size and calorie information. Drawing from expectancy-disconfirmation theory, this research shows that providing calories per serving information can ironically create unintended consequences for perceptually unhealthy snacks, with consumers eating more. The authors find that this effect arises when calorie expectations are higher than the calories per serving level on a serving size label, which often occurs with current serving size labels as the stated serving size is lower than amounts typically consumed in one sitting. The authors offer managerial, public policy, and consumer welfare implications for the findings of this research.