Persuasion knowledge activation versus health knowledge intervention: enhancing the effectiveness of Front-of-Pack nutritional labels against misleading information

The rise in overweight and obesity is driving an increasing prevalence of noncommunicable and chronic diseases all around the globe, resulting in a heavier burden on individuals and higher costs for families and health systems. The presence of misleading information on food packaging exacerbates the situation by causing consumers to unknowingly choose less healthy options. Front-of-pack nutritional labels (FOPLs) have been reported as solutions to provide consumers with reliable information and be able to partially mitigate misleading information with negative consequences on consumers’ health. However, FOPLs exposure presents some limitations as misleading information may divert consumer attention from FOPLs and lead them to misinterpret the product as healthier than it actually is. Therefore, further interventions are needed to empower consumers to be better informed and educated. Our exploratory experiment, including 79 participants, found that persuasion knowledge activation, compared to health knowledge intervention, are more effective in assisting Front-of-pack nutritional labels against misleading information. Hence, building of persuasion knowledge model, we examined the underlying mechanisms that motivate consumers to engage more effectively with health information (i.e., spread the negative word of mouth of products that contain misleading information), using a psychological reactance perspective.