Appetite
-
Food consumption decisions require consumers to evaluate the characteristics of products. However, the literature has given limited attention to how consumers determine the impact of food on health (e.g., kilocalories) and on the environment (e.g., carbon footprint). In this exercise, 1511 consumers categorised 43 food products as healthy/unhealthy and good/bad for the environment, and estimated their kilocalories and carbon footprint, which were known to the investigator. ⋯ Notably, traffic-light increase accuracy by reducing the response compression of the metric scale. The benefits of labels are particularly evident for carbon footprint. Overall, these results indicate that consumers struggle to estimate numerical information, and labels are crucial to ensure consumers make sustainable decisions, particularly for unfamiliar metrics like carbon footprint.