Capitán Jimenéz, Tabaré
- Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Abstract
Calorie labeling is a popular policy to address the obesity epidemic, but it has had little empirical success. Under the premise that willful avoidance of information plays a role in this result, we propose a novel approach-pre-nudges-to make consumers more receptive to calorie information. Unlike nudges, which are used to directly influence a choice, pre-nudges are used to directly influence how consumers react to the nudge itself (the calorie label). In line with predictions from our theoretical analysis, we test two pre-nudges in the context of menu labeling: one aims to increase self-efficacy, and the other one highlights the long-term health risks of overeating. In a large-scale laboratory experiment, we find that both pre-nudges reduce calorie information avoidance. Overall, our paper suggests a possible role for pre-nudges in addressing the obesity epidemic-one of the largest public health issues globally-and illustrates the potential usefulness of pre-nudges more generally.
Keywords
Pre-nudge; Nudge; Information avoidance; Calorie information; D04; D90; D80; C91
Published in
Journal of Risk and Uncertainty
2026
Publisher: SPRINGER
SLU Authors
Nordström, Jonas
- Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
- Lund University
- Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
UKÄ Subject classification
Economics
Publication identifier
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11166-025-09471-9
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/145905