Vending Labeling Sales and Intercepts Study

University of Pennsylvania

Status: Completed

Conditions: Weight Gain; Obesity; Food Preferences

Treatments: Behavioral: exposure to healthiness information; Behavioral: exposure to physical activity equivalents; Behavioral: exposure to sweetened beverage tax messaging; Behavioral: exposure to healthy labels only

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; NIH

Identifiers

NCT06260176

828722

15163 (Registry Identifier)

R01DK113307 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Details and patient eligibility

About

The aim of this study is to compare the impact of 4 different types of front of package (FOP) food and beverage messages: 1) green labels on healthy foods, 2) red/yellow/green labels on less healthy/moderately healthy/healthy foods, 3) physical activity calorie equivalent labels, and 4) posters reminding consumers of the sweetened beverage tax on consumers' beverage and snack selections.

Full description

This project involves a randomized field experiment. The investigators worked with the vending contractor for the City of Philadelphia to randomize vending machine locations (covering ~260 beverage and snack machines) to one of the four different message conditions: 1) single green traffic light labels (on healthy foods); 2) multiple traffic light labels (red traffic light labels applied to less healthy foods, yellow applied to moderately healthy foods, and green on healthy foods); 3) physical activity labels (calorie content displayed in terms of physical activity equivalents); 4) posters reminding consumers of the Philadelphia sweetened beverage tax and encouraging healthier choices. The City's vending machine contractors provided monthly aggregated sales data from each machine for analysis. Customer intercepts were also collected at the point of sale, after customers completed their purchase, to evaluate factors that moderate message influence. They were asked to answer questions about their perceptions of the different labels.

Enrollment: 1,065 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Sales data include all purchases at the machine regardless of customer demographics.

Customer purchase assessment data were collected from:

Inclusion Criteria:

• Any person aged 18 or older making a purchase from the vending machines included in this intervention will be asked to participate in this study.

Exclusion Criteria:

• People who indicate they have already taken the survey are not eligible to take the survey again.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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1,065 participants in 4 patient groups

Green labels

Experimental group

Description:

green label added to healthy product slots; no additional labels shown for "less healthy" products and 1 poster per machine explaining the labels

Treatment:

Behavioral: exposure to healthy labels only

Traffic light labels

Experimental group

Description:

red/yellow/green labels added to slots for less healthy/moderately healthy/healthy products, respectively and 1 poster per machine explaining the labels

Treatment:

Behavioral: exposure to healthiness information

Physical activity calorie equivalent labels

Experimental group

Description:

labels added to slots that display products' calorie content in terms of physical activity required to burn those calories and 1 poster per machine explaining the labels

Treatment:

Behavioral: exposure to physical activity equivalents

Sweetened beverage tax posters

Experimental group

Description:

1 poster per machine; no labels; posters reminded consumers of the Philadelphia sweetened beverage tax and encouraging healthier choices

Treatment:

Behavioral: exposure to sweetened beverage tax messaging