Hide the Cookie Jar: Nudging Towards Healthy Eating

Abstract

Eating habits are a big concern among college students, who gain considerable weight by consuming unhealthy food in their first years. As a response, many universities enter into costly programs to alleviate this problem. We study the effect of a simple, cheap option: move unhealthy items out of sight. The opportunity to do this comes from a natural experiment that led a dining hall in the University of New Hampshire to re-locate cookies from a main section in plain sight to a corner away from everyone's way. The cost of cookies did not change, since the dining hall operates as an "all that you can eat" restaurant. Relative to pizza, a product that did not change location, the consumption of cookies dropped by around 14% due to the re-location, with stronger effects on weekdays and lunch. We see this as evidence that simple changes in design can nudge students towards healthy eating.

Keywords: Nudge Theory, Healthy Eating, College Dining, Design Architecture

JEL Classification: D02, D12, I12