How Do Social Norms Influence Parents’ Food Choices for Their Children? The Role of Social Comparison and Implicit Self-Theories

Abstract

Despite the proliferation of healthier side items for children at fast food restaurants, many parents still do not make healthy choices for their children in this setting. The goal of this research is to identify the parents most likely to do so and develop an intervention to nudge these parents toward making healthier choices in retail outlets. Across four field studies conducted in a retail environment (i.e., locations of a fast food restaurant chain), the authors predict and find that parents with a high tendency to engage in social comparison and a malleable view of the self are most likely to conform to the norm in their parental social network. Given that the norm in the population studied is to order a less healthy side item (e.g., fries) versus a healthy side item (e.g., fruit), conforming results in significantly less healthy orders for the children of these individuals. The authors demonstrate that a social norm-based intervention designed to set a new healthy norm in this retail environment succeeded in increasing the overall proportion of parents that chose a healthy side item by over 29% by increasing the choice of healthy sides specifically for these individuals. The authors conclude with a discussion of implications for theory, retail managers, and policy makers.