THE PREVALENCE AND EFFECTS OF FOOD ADVERGAMES TARGETING CHILDREN ON THEIR DIETARY ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIORS

• Sponsoring Institution: State Agricultural Experiment Station
• Project Status: COMPLETE
• Funding Source: STATE
• Reporting Frequency: Annual
• Accession No.: 0217478
• Project Start Date: Feb 1, 2009
• Project End Date: Jan 31, 2014
• Program Code: [(N/A)]- (N/A)

Recipient Organization
MICHIGAN STATE UNIV
(N/A)
EAST LANSING,MI 48824

Performing Department
Advertising

Non Technical Summary
Nearly 1/3 of U.S. children and teens are overweight or obese, with increased risk for serious health problems such as hypertension, high cholesterol, and type 2 diabetes. Precisely how advertising contributes to childhood obesity is unclear, but it is clear that it plays a role. At the same time that childhood obesity has reached epidemic status, children ares spending more time online. With heightened public scrutiny and pressure from parents and policy makers, major food marketers have begun to change how they promote their products to children. Many companies have limited traditional advertising while adopting a new tactic - branded, free online games known as advergames, with the potential for engaging children and influencing their attitudes. For example, a game for a cookie brand incorporates the cookie as a game piece. To play, a child moves a glass of milk around a computer screen as cookies fall from the sky. The goal is to catch as many falling cookies as possible before time runs out; the more cookies, the higher the score. The implication is clear - consuming more cookies is rewarding and rewarded. If used to promote healthy lifestyles and good dietary habits, games can be powerful and beneficial. When used to sell non-nutritious food to children, the same type of game could contribute to the obesity epidemic. The goal of this research is to understand how advergames work and to identify their effects. The first step to is to understand how widespread advergames are. A content analysis study of websites will be conducted, identifying how many games are offered, characteristics of those games, and the nutritional content of the promoted food brands. This study will also explore whether marketers clearly identify the advertising nature of games, one of the key criteria required by the voluntary limits on advertising to children that most major food makers have adopted. This study will update information gathered in 2006, when the websites of 170 major food companies were evaluated for the presence of advergames, and 290 of the 632 games that were found were analyzed. The second step is to examine the effects of advergames on children. Children will be allowed to either play games while their activity is recorded, or watch recordings of others playing the games. Children and parents will answer questions before and after playing. Comparisons will be made between children who played advergames and children who simply watched others play, and between older and younger children. The study will provide new knowledge about how these advergames influence children, with the potential for guiding the development of educational games that can help children learn about nutrition and adopt positive diets and healthy behaviors. Finally, understanding how widespread advergames are, and if and how they work to influence children, can contribute to the public policy debate. The research will be conducted, and results disseminated, under the umbrella of the Children's Central research collaborative in the MSU Department of Advertising, PR, and Retailing, supported by the Michigan Children's Trust Fund and Prevent Child Abuse America.

Animal Health Component

(N/A)

Research Effort Categories

Basic

(N/A)

Applied

(N/A)

Developmental

(N/A)

Classification

Knowledge Area (KA)	Subject of Investigation (SOI)	Field of Science (FOS)	Percent
607	6010	3030	10%
610	6010	3030	30%
703	6010	3030	30%
806	6010	3030	30%

Knowledge Area
703 - Nutrition Education and Behavior; 806 - Youth Development; 607 - Consumer Economics; 610 - Domestic Policy Analysis;

Subject Of Investigation
6010 - Individuals;

Field Of Science
3030 - Information and communication;

Keywords

advertising

children

childhood obesity

food advertising

advergames

nutrition

advertising policy

Goals / Objectives
With nationwide concern for childhood obesity and an emphasis on the need for healthier lifestyles, food marketing has surfaced as a central environmental factor that shapes children's dietary behavior. Free online games specifically designed to promote branded products, also known as advergames, integrate food brand identifiers (brand names, brand logos, pictures of food and its packaging) into the games as key game play components (Lee Choi Quilliam Cole 2009). Food advergames most often promote non-nutritious food products, and blur the line between advertising and entertainment, challenging the ability of children to notice and resist their persuasive intent while also coming in under the radar of regulators and policy makers. The overall objective of this study is to identify the prevalence and role of food advergames in determining children's dietary behaviors and health status. Specifically, in phase 1 this research will examine the frequency of advergames on food marketers' websites, the nutritional content of the advertised foods, compliance with self-regulatory restrictions, and the mechanisms used in these games. In addition, phase 2 of the study will explore how these mechanisms work to attract children to brands and influence their attitudes and behaviors. Activities in phase 1 will include content analysis of food marketers' websites and advergames targeting children, analysis of the nutritional content of advertised brands, and analysis of companies' compliance with voluntary limits on marketing to children. Activities in phase 2 include conducting and analyzing experiments involving children playing or observing advergames. The research will be conducted, and results disseminated, under the umbrella of the Children's Central research collaborative in the MSU Department of Advertising, Public Relations, and Retailing, supported by the Michigan Children's Trust Fund and Prevent Child Abuse America.

Project Methods
Phase 1 will be a content analysis of advergames targeting children. First, the games analyzed in a previous study (Lee Choi Quilliam Cole, Journal of Consumer Affairs 2009) will be examined to determine whether they are still offered and whether the company has provided disclosures identifying the games as advertisements. Then an inventory of websites operated by major food marketers will be conducted to identify advergames targeting children. Next, a random sample of games from the new inventory will be generated and a code sheet developed for further analysis of those games. Two independent coders will be trained and will subsequently evaluate the games. Variables to be coded will include type of brand identifier, type of integration, category of food product, presence or absence of advertisement disclaimer, and primary game function. In addition, nutrition information will be obtained and evaluated for each branded product represented in one of the analyzed games. Data will be analyzed using standard content analysis methods, including a check for intercoder reliability. Phase 2 will be a 2 (experience mode: active playing or passive watching) X 2 (child's persuasion knowledge: high or low) between-subjects experiment with approximately 120 research subjects. Children will be assigned to either play an advergame or to observe pre-recorded game play. A pretest will identify the level of each child's persuasion knowledge, expected to be closely related to age. In addition, parents of participating children will be asked to complete questionnaires regarding their children's demographic information, Body Mass Index (BMI) or height and weight, dietary behavior, and media consumption. The games will be played or observed at a computer lab operated by ITEC-Lansing, a public-private partnership. Software provided by TechSmith, Morae, will be used to make digital and video recordings of children's computer interactions. A modified version of an existing advergame will be used for the active playing condition, while a Morae recording of game play will be used as the stimulus for the passive condition. Data will be analyzed using a multivariate analysis of co-variance.

Progress 02/01/09 to 01/31/14

Outputs
OUTPUTS: Food marketing has been identified as contributing to the childhood obesity epidemic in the U.S. The goal of this project was to investigate one new food marketing tactic, the use of interactive online games. Specifically, the intent was to determine the prevalence and role of food advergames in determining children's dietary behaviors and health status. In phase one, now completed, research was conducted to identify food advergames on major marketers' websites, identify the nutritional content of the advertised games, and evaluate the compliance with industry self-regulatory guidelines regarding food marketing to children. During 2009, we conducted a content analysis of food advergames on major food marketers' websites. This included developing the coding scheme, identifying companies and games, mentoring and supervising two doctoral student research assistants, training undergraduate and masters student research assistants for data collection, analyzing data. Information has been disseminated via two presentations. The first was a presentation at a conference in East Lansing, MI, in November 2009, "Consumer Culture and the Ethical Treatment of Children: Theory, Research, & Fair Practice," by collaborator Dr. Mira Lee of Michigan State University. The audience included scholars in a variety of disciplines concerned with children, media, and marketing, as well as practitioners affiliated with the Children's Trust Fund of Michigan, the state's designated child abuse prevention organization. In addition, I presented preliminary research findings at the Federal Trade Commission public forum, "Sizing Up Food Marketing and Childhood Obesity," Washington, D.C., December 15, 2009. Audience included regulatory agency representatives (FTC, FDA), industry representatives, scholars, advocacy organizations, and the press. Media reports about this forum included a profile of the advergame study in Mediapost (December 16, 2009), an online publication that reaches an audience of marketing professionals and scholars as well as the general public. PARTICIPANTS: Collaborated with Drs. Mira Lee and Richard Cole to conduct advergame content analysis study. Supervised doctoral students Szu-Chueh Lee and Mikyoung Kim, and mentored two master's and one undergraduate student research assistants. Collaborated with Drs. Lee, Cole, Nora Rifon, Hye-jin Paek, and Lorraine Weatherspoon to build on basic foundation established in this study and develop research proposal for external funding. Proposals submitted to Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and NIH. TARGET AUDIENCES: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.

Impacts
This project is intended to provide input to marketers and policy makers concerned with food marketing and its influence on children's dietary attitudes and behaviors. Our study results show that the majority of food products in advergames (online interactive games incorporating brand identifiers) are for foods that nutritionists consider unhealthy when measured by the Nutrition Standards for Foods in Schools guidelines from the Institutes of Medicine. Further, our research indicated that advergames presented by companies participating in the industry's self-regulatory program were more, rather than less, likely to contain a higher proportion of unhealthy foods than were similar games offered by non-participating companies. This new knowledge can contribute to the ongoing public policy debate regarding food marketing self-regulation, and to the discussion surrounding development of new standards, now under consideration and scheduled to be reported to Congress in July 2010, for foods marketed to children. Our study also highlights the need for standardization of both nutrition guidelines and definitions of marketing directed to children. Finally, this research provides a foundation for future experimental studies intended to identify the mechanisms by which advergames influence children, which can then later be applied to the development of interactive games promoting healthy dietary choices and healthy behaviors.

Publications

• Quilliam, E.T., Rifon,N.M., Lee, M., Paek, H-J., Cole, R. 2009. Food advergames targeting children: prevalence, effects, and policy implications. Electronic conference proceedings (abstract). Consumer Culture and the Ethical Treatment of Children conference, East Lansing, MI.