Title
Behavioral Drivers of Food Choice in Eastern India
Abstract
The proposed project aims to develop a context- and culture-specific framework to understand the behavioral drivers of food choice of a target population of urban and rural households in lower to middle socioeconomic classes in eastern India (West Bengal and Odisha). The framework is applied to the eastern Indian context through expert elicitation and further refined through consumer surveys to obtain detailed information on current food choice and awareness of, attitudes toward, and demand for quality, nutritional, and health attributes of food and nutrition-sensitive interventions. We further develop an interactive tablet application and conduct behavioral experiments with the target population to elicit and study behavioral change in food choice in response to nutrition-sensitive information and interventions within the framework. The experiments are designed to reveal the impact of gendered decision-making on food choice, behavioral change, and nutritional outcomes within the household. Data generated by these novel tools then feed into a detailed ex ante impact assessment of nutrition-sensitive interventions on nutrition security and health of the poor in eastern India. Through this novel combination of approaches, the project intends to aid policymakers in designing segmented, nutrition-sensitive intervention strategies that are gender-appropriate and high-impact.
Lead Institution
International Rice Research Institute (IRRI)
Collaborating Institutions
KIIT University, India
Principal Investigator(s)
> Matty Demont, PhD, Senior Economist, Market and Value Chain Research, International Rice Research Institute
Co-Investigator(s)
> Rosa Paula Cuevas, PhD, Scientist-Sensory Profiling, Grain Quality and Nutrition Center, International Rice Research Institute
> Arindam Samaddar, PhD, Agricultural Anthropologist, International Rice Research Institute
> Marie Claire Custodio, MBA, Senior Associate Scientist I, Market and Value Chain Research, International Rice Research Institute
> Suva Mohanty, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Marketing, KIIT University