We’re wrapping up our week highlighting recent capstone projects from UBC’s Advanced Professional Certificate in Behavioural Insights with an exciting announcement: There is a brand-new publication arising from a capstone project conducted by members of the Class of 2023!
Dr. Karina Spoyalo, Nicole Viduka, and Sarah-Jean Dixon have co-authored an article with their project advisor Dr. Jiaying Zhao and project partner Dr. Andrea MacNeill. The project investigates “Using salience and availability to promote sustainable and healthy food choices in hospital cafeterias“.
Summary:
Sustainable diets can achieve considerable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and improvements in human health, but changing dietary behavior remains a challenge. We assessed the impacts of two behavioral insights strategies on bridging the intention-action gap related to sustainable and healthy food choices amongst hospital cafeteria patrons. In Study 1, increasing salience was associated with significant uptake of sustainable and healthy dishes, but the effect disappeared once the salience intervention was removed. In Study 2a, increasing availability of sustainable dishes corresponded to a significant increase in purchases of sustainable dishes, while decreasing availability in Study 2b followed a downward trend in purchases, suggesting that availability drove dietary choices. We recommend hospitals consider these choice architecture interventions to support the adoption of sustainable and healthy diets.
Keywords: behavioural insights, nudge, salience, availability, climate crisis, sustainable diet, planetary healthcare, public health
Read the full article in Scientific Reports or check out other working papers from the Advanced Professional Certificate and DIBS faculty.