The Effect Of Consideration Of Future Consequence On Healthy Eating Decisions

Healthy eating is both an important aspect of HEALTHY CHINA program and everyone’s daily lifestyles.CFC,the Consideration of Future Consequence,which refers to to what extent individuals consider the potential future results of their current behavior,and to what extent they are affected by these potential results,was related to healthy eating decisions according to a number of studies.Framing effect refers to the phenomenon that people have different reactions to different descriptions of an objectively identical problem(frame).Framed information may change the direction of decision-making in population level according to many studies.It has been found that framed health information based gain-and-loss frame or temporal frame will affect the healthy eating decisions of experimental participants.However,by far,whether framed CFC messages can have different effects on healthy eating decisions for domestic groups is less investigated.Therefore,this thesis aims at doing this by five studies.In study 1,the Chinese version of Consideration of Future Consequence-food scale was translated and validated with data collected,to ensure the measurement of subsequent studies are qualified.In study 2,the relationship between CFC and healthy eating habits was tested to provide an empirical basis for study 3 and 4.Study3 and 4 were experimental studies designed based on gain-and-loss frame and temporal frame respectively to test whether the relationship between CFC and healthy eating decisions for college students are significantly affected by the two kinds of frames.Study 5 was an exploratory study that used the grounded theory approach to investigate the dietary self management for domestic college students,and provided evidence for explaining the results of Study 3 and 4.The results show,for study 1,the translated Consideration of Future Consequence-food scale had good reliability and validity and was qualified to be used in academic research.For study 2,CFC was significantly positively correlated with college students’ healthy eating habits.For study 3,the interaction between CFC and the gain-and-loss frame was significant.For study 4,the interaction between CFC and temporal frame was significant.The effect size of interaction in both study3,4 reached the critical value of a small effect suggested by Cohen.Study5 found that,College students’ dietary decisions were influenced by both "attractive factors" and "restrictive factors".In the process of balancing these two factors,they simultaneously achieved the management of their own dietary health.However,the strategy they adopted was negative,which first considers "how to eat without being too unhealthy" rather than "how to eat to become healthier.".In conclusion,there was a framing effect between CFC and healthy eating decisions for college students having low CFC.Specifically,compared with the gain frame,no significant difference was found between its effect and that of loss frame;The current frame made them to make healthier eating decisions than the future frame.The experimental results revealed small effects,which might caused by‘negative’ dietary management strategies that college students adopted.