How health information affects college students' inclination toward variety-seeking tendency

Abstract

College students often consume too much snacks (e.g. potato chips) and such high-fat snacks are found to be related to obesity. This paper seeks to explore the effect of health-related information on the relationship of mood states and variety seeking (VS) behavior among enjoyable snacks. Health warnings and nutritional labeling are used to examine the moderating effects on this relationship. Consistent with our hypotheses, the results indicate that the presence of health warnings attenuates the influence of mood states on VS, so that happy and sad students tend to converge to similar levels of VS. However, in the absence of health warnings, sad students tend to incorporate significantly more VS than happy students. Similarly, the presence of nutritional labeling attenuates the influence of mood states on VS, so that happy and sad students tend to converge to similar levels of VS. However, in the absence of nutritional labeling, sad students tend to incorporate significantly more VS than happy students. The results provide evidence that making health warnings and nutritional labeling more salient might be a good way to decrease students' VS tendency for high-fat snacks.