Australian consumers are willing to pay for the health star rating front-of-pack nutrition label

Authors

Sheri L. Cooper
Lucy M. Butcher, Edith Cowan University
Simone D. Scagnelli, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Johnny Lo, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Maria M. Ryan, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Amanda Devine, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow
Therese A. O’Sullivan, Edith Cowan UniversityFollow

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Title

Nutrients

Volume

12

Issue

12

First Page

1

Last Page

16

Publisher

MDPI

School

School of Medical and Health Sciences / School of Business and Law / School of Science

RAS ID

32605

Comments

Cooper, S. L., Butcher, L. M., Scagnelli, S. D., Lo, J., Ryan, M. M., Devine, A., & O’Sullivan, T. A. (2020). Australian consumers are willing to pay for the health star rating front-of-pack nutrition label. Nutrients, 12(12), article 3876. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12123876

Abstract

© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. The Australia and New Zealand Ministerial Forum on Food Regulation has supported the recommendations set out in the 2019 Health Star Rating System Five Year Review Report. Specifically, the forum supported, in principle, Recommendation 9, to mandate the Health Star Rating if clear uptake targets were not achieved while the system is voluntary. Given that mandatory labelling is being considered, it is important to investigate how much consumers value the Health Star Rating in order to understand potential consumer uptake and inform industry. The aim of this study was to assess consumers’ valuation of the Health Star Rating system by analysing their willingness to pay for a packaged food product with the Health Star Rating label, utilising a double-bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation approach. The results indicate that almost two-thirds of Australian household grocery shoppers were willing to pay more for a product with the Health Star Rating, on average up to an additional 3.7% of the price of the product. However, public health nutrition benefits associated with consumers’ willingness to pay more for products with the Health Star Rating is currently limited by the lack of guarantee of the systems’ accuracy. Given consumer support, a well validated and comprehensive Health Star Rating labelling system can potentially improve health outcomes, cost effectiveness and reduce environmental impacts.

DOI

10.3390/nu12123876

Related Publications

Butcher, L. M. (2021). An investigation of the associated factors and measurement of food insecurity in Australia. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/2404

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.