Nudging for more fruits and vegetables

Nationaal Actieplan Groenten en Fruit (NAGF), Dutch Association for Fruits and Vegetables. This project was done in collaboration with Food Cabinet and Hoogvliet.

NAGF is a coalition of government, business and non-profit organizations whose goal is to stimulate the consumption of fruit and vegetables in the Netherlands.

NAGF wanted to experiment with nudges in a Dutch supermarket. The project aimed to study the effectiveness of applying nudges with the goal of stimulating the sale of fruits and vegetables. The effect of the nudges was measured through the sales volumes of fruits and vegetables.

For the period of a month we set up Hoogvliet’s online environment (website and the app) with different nudges to stimulate fruit and vegetable sales. These nudges were developed using insights from scientific research. The online shoppers in the research period were divided into two groups: the intervention group was shown the nudges and the control group ended up in the ‘regular’ environment.

In total, the nudging group bought 7% more vegetables and 6% more fruit than the control group, measured by volume and per piece. Interestingly, the number of different kinds of vegetables purchased increased by 7% as well.

The nudging was only effective for shoppers who already had some vegetables or fruit in their baskets, and so did not increase the number of shoppers who bought fruits and vegetables. The most effective nudge was the add-to-cart suggestion, particularly with relevant combinations (e.g. adding kiwi to a basket containing yoghurt)

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