Monday Seminar: Do consumers respond to nutritional labels? Evidence from a quasi-experiment

Abstract: This paper evaluates a recent UK policy that aimed to improve dietary information provision by introducing nutrition labelling on retailers’ own-brand products. We examine the introduction of Front-of-Pack (FOP) nutrition labels on the expenditure share of labelled and unlabelled food groups using the timing of introduction of FOP labels by British retailers as a quasi-experiment. Our findings show that labelling led to a drop in the share of spending on labelled foods. However, we find no clear indication of any change in the ‘healthiness’ of the food basket, suggesting that households reduced their spending without changing the nutritional composition of the food group.