TealHelix · TealHelix: Building Resilience Through Inclusive and Personalized Food Labeling

The TealHelix advances the state-of-the-art by proposing a more precise and targeted approach – empowerment through personalization and inclusion. Using the underlying logic of motivational matching, we will develop a number of new labeling approaches and digital social innovations to guide and improve consumer decision-making. Such an approach will also enable us to address resistance to sustainability ideas and tailor our interventions to the heterogeneity in individual needs of vulnerable consumers. Combining insights from life cycle, social and economic environments analysis, measurement, and consumer behavior theories, we will develop a new measure to assess how individual and planetary preferences for various sustainability dimensions can be aligned to reach sustainability goals. Next, we will test a number of means of transmission: traditional labeling approaches, digital and brick-and-mortar retail labeling approaches, and smart labeling approaches. To sustain and scale the change, we will develop integrity guidelines and new sustainability information provision standards for the industry. We will leverage the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary competencies of the consortium in marketing, consumer behavior, psychology, environmental, information sciences, as well as in communication, retailing, and standard-setting industries. The project will generate multiple novel methods to study labeling approaches and original empirical evidence through machine learning-based 'big data' analysis, large-scale surveys, experience-sampling and micro-level experiments. Finally, we will integrate the findings into digital social innovations powered by AI tools to support labeling solutions. As a result, we will provide a deeper understanding of how various external environments shape attitudes and beliefs towards food sustainability labeling, how to motivate consumers to follow sustainable labeling guidelines, and how to include the ones who are in greatest need.