Ecological and/or Nutritional Scores for Food Traffic-Lights: Results of an Online Survey Conducted on Pizza in France

Understanding the hierarchy for consumers between different labels signaling various characteristics defining food sustainability is still an open question. A web survey was conducted in France to examine how providing different scores about the environment and/or nutrition could influence purchase intents for one pizza. 1200 participants were recruited in France in April 2021. They were asked about their purchase intents for one pizza, before and after seeing nutritional and/or ecological scores associated with colors going from green to red. A Global-Score synthetizing both nutritional and ecological dimensions was also tested. The results show that the appearance of scores and colors significantly affect the purchase intents for this pizza. Indeed, for each type of score (namely nutritional, ecological or global), the dominant effect comes from the reduction in purchase intents related to the red color, although green or yellow colors also change purchase intents but to a lesser extent. With the red color, the nutritional score leads to more significant decreases in purchasing intents than the ones related to the ecological score or the Global-Score. With an additional round, the appearance of another score complementing the alternative one underlines that the negative impact of the red color for one score on purchase intents is not outweighed by the positive impact of the green color for the other score.

Automated summary

Understanding the hierarchy between different labeling systems in defining food sustainability for consumers is still uncertain. A survey conducted in France examined the influence of providing different environmental and/or nutritional scores on purchase intentions for a pizza. The results showed that the appearance of scores and colors significantly affected purchase intentions, with the red color having the strongest negative impact. Nutritional scores had a greater impact on reducing purchase intentions compared to ecological scores or a combined score.