The healthy = sustainable heuristic: Reaction Times and heuristic scope

Aim one of this study is to investigate whether the ‘healthy = sustainable’-heuristic occurs on an automatic, more implicit level. Aim two of the study is to determine the scope of the heuristic, i.e., if it is applied only to foods which are 'ambiguous', i.e., not clearly healthy or unhealthy or also is applied to 'unambiguous' foods such as vegetables or sweets. The sample of N = 534 living in Austria will be collected via a panel provider. In part one, participants see images of foods with custom-made high/low sustainability labels and are asked to decide if the foods are healthy or unhealthy while their reaction times are recorded. In part two participants see images of foods with manipulated food labels depicting either the Nutri-Score or the Eco-Score and are asked to rate foods on several dimensions (among which healthiness and sustainability). Data will be analysed using Bayesian multi-level-modelling.