THURS-099 - Applying Social Learning Theory to Explore the Impact of Digital Interventions on Food Purchasing Behaviors

Brief Abstract Summary: To gain an understanding of how digital interventions to promote healthy nutritional behaviors align with shifts in consumer food preferences and inform consumer food purchasing behavior. This study describes commonly used digital platforms used for health promotion, such as smartphone apps, virtual reality, block chain technology, and interactive nutrition labels to identify functional components that positively influence the uptake of healthy nutritional behaviors. Findings, contextualized using Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory, illuminate aspects of digital tools that facilitate behavioral change such as gamification approaches to incentivize and reward users and in-basket feedback during online grocery shopping that enhance knowledge and facilitate skill-building. Results may inform health promotion efforts employing digital tools that contain functionality aligned with theoretical constructs known to positively effect behavior change.

Detailed abstract description: Recent research has identified intersecting factors that may explain reasons for consumer food purchasing behaviors; these factors include knowledge, social influences, cultural values and belief systems, and extrinsic product characteristics. However, this research has had limited focus on the role of technology in promoting nutritional information among consumers. This paper explores the impact of digital interventions to inform consumer food purchasing behaviors, including the extent to which the use of technology can improve consumer knowledge and awareness of nutritional information found on food products as well as the strengths and limitations of this approach. Digital platforms explored include those commonly used to promote healthier food choices such as smartphone apps, virtual reality, and other technologies such as block chain technology, virtual assistants, and interactive nutrition labels. The overall role of these platforms in promoting informed decision-making is discussed in the context of a conceptual model that adapts the Social Learning Theory to describe the relationship between consumer shifting preferences and the influence of the digital intervention on food purchasing behavior. Smartphone applications include features that enable users to set nutritional goals and targets for the prevention of undernutrition; this can be seen as a feature that, as part of overall reciprocal determinism, acts as a social-environmental influence on an individual to shift their personal/cognitive and behavioral factors in order to encourage the achievement of nutritional goals. More interactive forms of digital interventions, such as virtual reality, virtual assistants, and interactive nutritional labels can help build long-lasting skills in being able to accurately identify and interpret nutritional information on food labels. Further, virtual reality and gamification systems are technological solutions that have strong potential in building this self-efficacy among its users due to their emphasis on participant engagement. The overall use of virtual reality to inform consumer decision-making is also aligned with known shifting consumer preferences such as interpretation of the food label, knowledge of nutritional information, intentionality, and changes to habits. This alignment of results with the theoretical factors and constructs of the Social Learning Theory are presented as a typology to depict how the identified digital interventions aim to address consumer preferences. Future educational interventions can be guided by similar conceptual models to design and implement innovative digital tools in order to have a meaningful influence on consumers to ultimately align with shifting preferences and improve diet-related health outcomes.