Children’s Response to Food Price and Warning Interventions When Purchasing Snack Foods

Abstract

The process by which children make food purchasing decisions is not well understood, despite some evidence that children have considerable autonomous purchasing power, and that much of it is directed toward food. Of particular interest is the extent to which proposed “fat taxes” and inclusion of additional information may influence children’s food purchases and consumption, and what developmental measures best predict responsiveness to such interventions. Incentive-compatible purchase experiments involving snack foods conducted with 10-12 year olds in after-school problems in Edmonton, Alberta, accompanied by 6 measures of child development. Participating children show responsiveness to price of snack food items in the experimental setting. The ability to influence children’s food purchasing choices depends on their attending to price differences and point-of-purchase information. The role of children’ s autonomous purchasing decisions has largely been ignored by practitioners and researchers to date, but is key to understanding the complete picture of modern children’s diets. Research support was provided by the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Research Network on Consumer and Market Demand.