영양표시유형에 따른 소비자반응의 효율성과 적합성

Abstract

Nutrition labels are a typical example of a food label, and have been considered the mostcommon and essential information channel for both consumers and manufacturers. However,despite the fact that consumers generally perceive the existence and importance of nutritionlabels, their actual use of such labels during food purchases is quite low. To solve this problem,many scholars and governments have been working to help inform consumers and influencetheir dietary choices in a healthy way with various nutrition label formats. Under this circumstance, to determine the most suitable nutrition label format among thesevarious examples, we compare the efficacy and accuracy of consumer responses under fourdifferent label formats(nutrition facts, nutrition certification mark, nutrition claim, trafficlights). We use nutrition certification mark and traffic lights as an experimental type, nutritionfacts and nutrition claims as a control type which is officially using in Korea. For this study, an Online panel survey was conducted using a questionnaire which wasmanipulated under critical experimental conditions. As a participants, 1,029 undergraduatestudents under age 25 were recruited to control external variables (e.g. age, education, andincome levels) which can have an impact on our results. The study’s results obtained based onthis are as follows:First, to evaluate objective efficiency of consumer responses, we measured the processingtime for product evaluation and product choice. The result shows consumers need more timeunder nutrition format which is contained more information or hard to process. Second, toexamine subjective efficiency of consumer responses, we measured the consumers’ utility evaluation based on readability, sufficiency, convenience, credibility and usability of four nutrition labelformats. According to results, consumers shows more positive evaluation for alternative formats(nutrition certification mark, traffic lights) than existing formats(nutrition facts, nutritionclaims). Third, to evaluate the accuracy of consumers’ food choice behavior, we present the fourproducts which have different price and nutrition levels and score the choice results from threeto zero point based on its accuracy. The result shows consumers make more accurate decisionsunder alternative formats than existing formats. Lastly, to confirm the moderating effect ofnutrition label format between the label using ability and choice accuracy, we performed atwo-way ANOVA analysis. According to the results, under alternative formats, the level ofchoice accuracy was more rapidly increased once label using ability improved compared toexisting formats. This study has important implications for suggesting two important values such as efficiencyand accuracy to evaluate the effect of nutrition labeling system, and also presenting theempirical method to apply these two values on consumers’ label using behavior.