Children as change makers in a household’s sustainable food consumption. Exploring how in-store marketing interventions targeting children can affect sustainable food literacy, -attitudes and - choices in children and their parents.

Stimulating consumers towards more sustainable food consumption (consumption activities which provide for the needs of the current generation while preserving the needs of future generations) is becoming increasingly important for governmental and academic actors and the food industry. For retailers, it can become a path to economic growth, because providing sustainable food options can lead to positive consumer responses. Reaching children is crucial to succeed at this, since childhood is an essential period for developing sustainable food habits and since children have an impact on parental decision making. The project will first gain insights in the role of sustainable food literacy in the development of children’s sustainable food attitudes and choices. Then, we will explore how retailers can stimulate sustainable food patterns by exploring two types of marketing interventions retailers can use in-store, namely (1) interventions that aim to convey knowledge and information about the topic (such as public service announcements and edutainment programs) and (2) interventions that tap into direct and automatic behavior (such as nudges). The project will also examine if the in-store interventions that target children can have an effect on how parents react to children’s product requests and if parents can also become more educated about sustainable food consumption after children have done so.