Importance of Self-Control in Facilitating Healthy Food Purchasing Behaviour Despite Cue Disruption: An Abstract

Unhealthy diets are a risk factor for ill health. Consumers from a lower socioeconomic (SE) background typically report unhealthier diets illustrating a need for a targeted approach. Supporting healthier food purchasing behaviour may facilitate healthier diets. Changing purchasing behaviour may be challenging due to inadequate nutrition knowledge, and routines and habits impede the use of reflective decision-making. Change may be supported by disrupting undesirable routines while simultaneously facilitating self-control and building knowledge. Apps offer a potential tool to support healthier behaviour due to their widespread use across all social groups. There is limited evidence in the context of healthy food purchasing. This research examined the impact of simultaneously disrupting undesirable routines and building personal resources, using a health app, on healthy purchasing behaviour. A qualitative approach explored the lived experience of behaviour change in women from a lower SE background over an 8–11 week period. Multiple data collection methods across different time-points captured an in-depth account of the behaviour change experience. Methods included accompanied shops, incorporating think-aloud protocol and researcher observations, semi-structured interviews, self-completed questionnaires, participant reflective accounts, and till receipt analysis. Approximately 2½ to 4 h of data were available per participant. Interpretative phenomenological analysis examined the individual experience and important personal, social, and environmental factors. Findings suggest that the simultaneous strategy of disrupting undesirable routines and exerting self-control may support healthier purchasing behaviour by facilitating a more conscious approach that is driven by healthy food goals. The app encouraged self-monitoring, problem solving, and behavioural prompting to identify and modify undesirable routines and related behavioural cues. Individual self-control was necessary to facilitate change, primarily due to the retail environment which elicited goals that competed with healthy food goals. Self-control was required to override the saliency of competing goals and ensure healthy food goals directed behaviour. This reliance on self-control may hinder change as individual capacity is limited. There is a need to move beyond individual behaviour change and focus on modifying the retail environment and social norms to facilitate sustained change. An individual’s goal system appeared to shape the change process and the degree to which conscious reflection was employed. A counterfinality goal configuration, where fulfilment of one goal undermines the attainment of another, appeared to prompt greater conscious reflection during food purchasing as individuals aimed to resolve potential goal conflict. This illustrates the importance of considering the individual’s broader goal system to design appropriately tailored health initiatives.