Determinants of Choice Regarding Food with Nutrition and Health Claims

Health is an increasingly important topic in the food market. The regulation (EC) No 1924/2006 on nutrition and health claims is meant to facilitate healthy food choices of consumers. However, research studies about claim perception and choice behaviour are scarce in Europe up to this point, especially those focusing on revealed preferences or a close-to-realistic study design. This contribution reports findings of realistically designed choice-tests accompanied by video-observation and followed by a face-to-face questionnaire. Logistic regression analysis was applied in order to determine the influencing factors on purchase behaviour of food products with claims. Perception of relative healthiness of the product with a claim, credibility of the claim and extent of information acquisition were found to influence choice positively, while claim format and product category were of no importance.