Healthy and Sustainable Food Shopping: A Survey of Intentions and Motivations

Objectives: To determine the relationship between sustainable and healthy food shopping behavior comparing general motivation with the immediate intention to act. Method: We conducted an online survey of 144 staff at the Cork Institute of Technology, Ireland, using a questionnaire based on the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Self-Determination Theory to compute the Behavioral Intention score and the Relative Autonomy Index in relation to healthy and sustainable grocery shopping. Results: The intention to shop healthy food was higher (p < 0.001, Cohen's d = 0.56) than the intention to shop in a sustainable way. A significant intention-action gap was observed for both healthy (p < 0.001, Cohen's d = 0.97) and sustainable grocery shopping (p < 0.001, Cohen's d = 1.78). While there was a significant correlation (p < 0.001) between the longer-term motivations to act in a healthy and sustainable way, this association was not significant (p = 0.16) for the more short-term Behavioral Intention scores. Conclusion and Implications: Health was identified as a more important driver for dietary behavior compared to sustainability. While longer-term motivation shows a stronger correlation between healthy and sustainable grocery shopping, short-term intentions do not follow this pattern as strongly. A significant intention-action gap exists for both, which is stronger for sustainability than for health

A theory‐driven design framework for smartphone applications to support healthy and sustainable grocery shopping

Modeling behavior has been a core topic of Psychology and the Social Sciences since their respective inception as academic disciplines. This has resulted in a fractured landscape of different theories, all addressing different aspects of behavior. At the same time the need to formalize the design of computer and smartphone applications has spawned the field of User Experience (UX). With the convergence of everyday behavior and the use of mobile devices the overlap between these two fields becomes ever more important. In this paper we present a comprehensive model of behavior, integrating five well-established theories, with the aim of creating a design framework for smartphone applications that foster motivation and promote the execution of a target behavior. The operationalization of the approach is demonstrated by showing how to design and implement a prototypical application to support healthy and sustainable grocery shopping behavior. While the framework proposed is not limited to this application, it is used to exemplify the relation with previous design approaches, and the concrete implications of the model-derived framework on its implementation. Our view is that both areas of research can benefit from each other: findings from behavioral theory can inform application design, while at the same time the ubiquitous integration of mobile applications allows to dynamically apply, operationalize, and implement behavioral models into everyday life

Supporting Grocery Shopping to Achieve a Healthy and Sustainable Diet – How Developing a Behavioural Theory Informs Dynamic Smartphone Applications

Health and sustainability are becoming increasingly important in current lifestyles. In this context healthy and sustainable grocery shopping is one key aspect to facilitate a balanced and environmentally friendly diet. Many people are interested in changing their habits to become healthier and to consider their impact on the environment through the choices they make. But many do not consider where a healthy and sustainable diet starts. In other words, people frequently have a vague idea that grocery shopping is an important aspect of a healthy and sustainable lifestyle, but they lack sufficient knowledge and action plans to act accordingly. Therefore, the observable behaviour in many cases shows what is called the intention-action/behaviour gap, the attitude-behaviour gap, or the knowing-doing gap (Ajzen, 2016; Grunert, 2011; Hoek, Pearson, James, Lawrence, & Friel, 2017; de Schutter, 2015; Bailey & Harper, 2015). To break this deadlock people, who are interested in such a lifestyle change, need the required information and support to create appropriate action plans to lead them through their grocery shopping without incurring excessive cognitive impact. The risk of such cognitive strain is that people give up easily on their good intentions and fall back into old unhealthy or environmentally impacting habits. Smartphones are ubiquitous and therefore could potentially solve many of these problems, but the design of suitable applications is mostly ad-hoc and not based on thorough modelling. On the other hand, existing behavioural models are considered to be too static and not up to the task of dynamically assessing and influencing behaviour as would be required by a smartphone-based intervention (Riley, et al., 2011; Spruijt-Metz & Nilsen, 2014). To address these problems this work proposes three major contributions: first, a novel comprehensive model of behaviour built on well-established theories used in psychology and the social science. The novelty is the consistent integration of well-proven pre-existing theories into one single comprehensive model that aims to capture the benefits and tries to overcome the limitations of each base theory. Based on this model, the second contribution of this work is the evaluation of motivation and intention to buy healthy and sustainable groceries. It has been found that health is more important than sustainability in this regard, and that health-related goals are easier to act on than sustainability related goals resulting in a bigger intention-action gap for sustainable grocery shopping. To address these issues, the third major contribution of this work is a model-derived design framework for smartphone-based interventions that provides comprehensive guidelines for developing applications to assess and support a specific behaviour, such as grocery shopping, while at the same time aiming at addressing a superordinate issue, such as health and sustainability

Plants with antimalarial properties: A systematic review of the current clinical evidence

Introduction: Malaria is one of the most common major health problems in tropical low-and middle-income countries, with antimalarial drugs being highly effective but also threatened by increasing drug resistance. Clinically efficacious, well-tolerated antimalarial plants could be an important and sustainable alternative treatment. This systematic review aims at identifying and critically appraising clinical trials testing plants with antimalarial properties for malaria treatment and/or prophylaxis. Methods: Studies were identified through PubMed, Elsevier Scopus and Cochrane Central, and scanning article reference lists. Records were published in English between 01/01/2005 and 15/01/2018. A framework for analysis based on the CONSORT statement was used for data extraction. Risk of bias was assessed. Results: Nine studies met inclusion criteria. Extracts from Argemone mexicana, Artemisia annua, Citrus aurantifolia, Nauclea pobeguinii, Nycthanthes arbor-tristis and Vernonia amygdalina were examined. Methodological rigorosity varied. Adequate clinical response at day 14 with A. mexicana was 81% (p=0.027) in one study and 89% (95% CI 84.1–93.2) on day 28 in another study. Similarly, 87.9% of participants taking N. pobeguinii had an adequate clinical response at day 14 (p=0.003). The risk of bias and study quality varied. Two studies had a Jadad score of 3 and all others but one a score of 1. Conclusions: Studies have demonstrated that antimalarial plants show promise for malaria treatment and prophylaxis. A. mexicana and N. pobeguinii extracts were supported by the best evidence. More work should be undertaken to better understand relevant approaches

Improving food shopping behaviour: A model-based review of mobile applications to assist with healthy and sustainable grocery shopping

Background Awareness of health and sustainability is increasing and can be supported by suitable smartphone applications. Most applications are designed based on commercial or ad-hoc considerations, although models for improving behavioural patterns and motivation have been studied in psychology and the social sciences. These models have so far not been widely applied to application design. Objective Grocery shopping is one example where behaviour-supporting applications are being widely used. This paper aims at reviewing existing applications in this domain and determine how these support motivational aspects identified by current behavioural models. Methods Existing behavioural theories are merged into a single redundancy free and comprehensive model. The model is used to categorise application features to assess the type and strength of support with respect to motivating healthy and sustainable grocery shopping behaviour. Results: The most popular Android applications in this area are evaluated, identifying potential strengths and weaknesses with respect to optimally supporting desired behaviour. Conclusion The most popular applications do not support desired behaviour best. By indicating which aspects of the behavioural model are supported by a mobile application it is possible to identify features not included that could be supplemented or improved in future application development

Motivations and Intentions for Healthy and Sustainable Grocery Shopping

This dataset has been collected to evaluate the potential relationships between motivations and intentions with respect to healthy and sustainable grocery shopping behaviour. It contains the answers of n=144 participants to a questionnaire designed according to the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and the Self-Determination Theory (SDT). The dataset comprises the raw data, the coding schema for data aggregation, and processed data aggregated according to the TPB and SDT

An Integrated Behavioural Model towards Evaluating and Influencing Energy Behaviour—The Role of Motivation in Behaviour Demand Response

The change in the actual use of buildings by its occupants is receiving more and more attention. Over the lifecycle of a building the occupants and therefore the demands towards the buildings often change a lot. To match these altering conditions, particularly in the context of the demand for energy efficiency, purely technical approaches usually cannot solve the problem on their own or are not financially viable. It is therefore essential to take the behaviour of the end user into account and ask the fundamental question: “How is it possible to influence people’s behaviour towards a more pro-environmental outcome, and also in the long-term?” To approach this question we will present a model-driven approach for dynamically involving building occupants into the energy optimisation process. To do so we will further develop an integrated behavioural model based on established behavioural theories, having a closer look how motivational variables can be integrated into the process. This should lead to novel approaches for behaviour demand response, enabling additional demand shifting and shedding through targeted real-time engagement with energy prosumers

Towards Integrating Behaviour Demand Response into Simulation Based Heat Production Optimisation

Behaviour Demand Response (BDR) is the process of communicating with the building occupants and integrating their behavioural flexibility into the energy value chain. In this paper we will present an integrated behavioural model based on well-established behavioural theories and show how it can be used to provide predictable flexibility to the production schedule optimisation. The proposed approach is two-fold: the model can be used to predict the expected behavioural flexibility of occupants as well as to generate optimal communication to trigger reliable BDR events. A system architecture will be presented showing how BDR can be integrated into simulation passed building/district operation