Nudging Dietary Decisions with the Nutri-Score - an fMRI study

The current pre-registration involves a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging ( fMRI) study aiming to investigate the impacts of the Nutri-Score on brain activation patterns during dietary decision-making while participants are in hungry state. Our primary focus lies in understanding how this nutritional labeling system shapes choices concerning perceived-healthiness, perceived-tastiness, and willingness-to-pay (WTP). Combining psychophysiological interaction (PPI) and whole-brain analyses, we delve into the neural mechanisms that drive the Nutri-Score's impact on dietary decision processes, employing both a rating task and a behavioral binary choice task. The study's contribution unfolds in two stages. Firstly, through PPI analyses, we aim to unveil how the Nutri-Score influences functional connections within brain networks during the decision-making process, particularly concerning healthiness, tastiness and WTP of the products. Subsequently, utilizing whole-brain analyses, we will construct models of participants' binary choices, based on their neural activation clusters identified during the rating task.