Presentation at the AI for Healthy Behavioral Change workshop, which is part of the Persuasive Technology conference in Eindhoven, April 2023. The presentation is about the work-in-progress paper titled "Nudging in AI: The varying effectiveness of healthy food nudges in a recipe recommender system." I show that different healthy eating nudges have varying effectiveness in a personalized decision-making context. The work is with Ellen van Loo

1. Nudging in AI: The varying
effectiveness of healthy food
nudges in a recipe
recommender system
Work with Ellen van Loo, WUR
19 April 2023
Dr.ir. Alain Starke

2. Eating healthy
is challenging...

3. There is choice
overload

4. Recipe Recommender Systems

5. Digital Healthy Food Nudges
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Following the Taxonomy of Cadario & Chandon (2020):
• Affectively oriented nudges (e.g., Elsweiler & Trattner, 2017; Starke et al., 2021;
visually enhancing photos of healthy foods)
• Behaviorally oriented nudges (e.g., Starke et al., 2021; list re-ranking on health)
• Cognitively oriented nudges (e.g., using a Nutriscore food label)

6. Do Nudges still work in a personalized
environment?
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•Content already fits a user’s preferences
•Previous studies focused on individual behaviors or contexts
mostly

7. Focus on two nudges (2x2 between design)
•Defaults: Either starting with
the ‘unhealthy’ or ‘healthy’ tab
•Labels: Showing a Multiple
Traffic Light label or no label

8. RQs into choice and evaluation
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• RQ1: To what extent do healthy recipe defaults and nutrition labels affect a user’s recipe
choices in a personalized food recommender system?
• RQ2: To what extent do healthy recipe defaults and nutrition labels affect a user’s
evaluation of a personalized food recommender system?

9. Conceptual Model
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10. Platform: https://recipe-study.wur.nl
Recommender System based on title & ingredients
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11. Dataset, Measures & Participants
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• DATASET: ‘Giallo Zaferano’: 20 random recipes for calibration, sampling from
a database of 3000 recipes
• CHOICE: WHO health score of chosen recipes (0-7)
• EVALUATION: Choice Satisfaction
• USER: Subjective Food Knowledge
• PARTICIPANTS: 265 UK users recruited through Prolific

12. Results
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13. Results: Healthiness of recipe choices
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Defaults work!

14. Results of the SEM
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14

15. Implications
• Behaviorally oriented nudges more appropriate in choice tasks?
• Users might not have well-established preferences in such a task
• Cognitive nudges more effective when decisions are more important?
• Effectiveness of combining multiple nudging strategies?
• Knowledge did not affect the results

16. Thank you!
• A.d.starke@uva.nl
• Assistant Professor Persuasive Communication, University of
Amsterdam