The impact of multi-labelling and conflicting information on Food Consumption Confusion and subsequent consumers’ behaviours

Preserving our health and our planet requires sustainable food consumption behaviours. Food labels can foster them but labelling proliferation may get consumers confused (Bratt et al., 2011). Consumer Confusion (CC) is “an uncomfortable cognitive state of mind in the decision-making process that affects choice behaviour through its affective and behavioural consequences" (Chauhan and Sagar, 2021, p.446). Moreover, combined conflicting labels could exacerbate the potential conflict between one’s health and ecology, which could worsen CC and discourage sustainable behaviours. Thus, the question of the right quantity and the congruence (i.e: a suitability between two things (Maille and Fleck, 2011)) of information, to avoid CC, is raised. Therefore, we study the impact of multi-labelling on consumers, particularly when the information is conflicting. Investigating CC in the context of food is relevant because CC could harm nutrition literacy, and thus, prevent consumers from adopting sustainable behaviours. Indeed, as consumers find healthy eating communications unclear, they tend to take dietary advice from unreliable sources, which impoverishes their nutrition knowledge (Spiteri Cornish and Moraes, 2015). Therefore, nutrition literacy (i.e: the ability to access, interpret, and use nutrition information (Carbone and Zoellner, 2012)), is key to foster healthier choices (Block et al., 2011). It appears relevant to develop a proper food-related concept, Food Consumption Confusion (FCC), as the concept of CC is too broad to specifically consider the food-context particularities (e.g: conflict between one’s health and sustainability). Moreover, the literature highlights the role of Self-Efficacy (i.e., an individual's perceived effectiveness in performing a behavior; SE) and Perceived Consumer Effectiveness (i.e., a consumer's perceived effectiveness in achieving a goal; PCE) in adopting sustainable behaviours. However, their relationship and roles in a confusing context are still unclear. We answer three questions: What is the impact of conflicting information on Food Consumption Confusion? What are the roles and relationship between PCE and SE? What is the overall process that explains consumers’ responses in a confusing context? We expect that conflicting scorings would create confusion through perceived conflict, which would lower trust in labels, engender a general feeling of food consumption confusion, and finally make consumers give up sustainable behaviours. This could be moderated by environmental and nutrition sensitivities, and knowledge about scorings. We conducted an online experiment using Nutri-Score and Eco-Score (respectively: labels assigning a score to a product based on its healthiness and eco-friendliness), on a food package. This collect gathered 215 participants, randomly distributed over three conditions: a Nutri-Score A, a combination of coherent Nutri-Score A and Eco-Score B, or a combination of conflicting Nutri-Score A and Eco-Score D. The data will be analyzed with statistical tools and results will be available for the conference. This study is integrated in a larger inter-disciplinary doctoral research project, encompassing psychology, marketing, and sustainability perspectives. To give an example, psychology researchers could help us explain consumers’ psychological processes. We will contribute to different streams of research: Food Consumption Confusion, multi-labelling, meta sustainability labelling, self-efficacy, perceived consumer effectiveness and nutrition literacy. We will also offer managerial contributions and public policy makers.