Hide the Cookie Jar: Nudging toward healthy Eating

Abstract College students gain a considerable amount of weight by consuming unhealthy food. Many universities adopt costly programs to alleviate this problem. We study the effect of a simple, inexpensive option: moving unhealthy items out of sight. The opportunity to investigate this intervention comes from the decision of a dining hall in the University of New Hampshire that relocated cookies from a main section in plain sight to an out-of-the way corner. The cost of cookies did not change, since the dining hall operates as an “all that you can eat” restaurant. Relative to pizza, a product that did not change location, the consumption of cookies dropped by up to 22% relative to their predicted level had the relocation not taken place. We see this as evidence that simple changes in design can nudge students towards healthy eating.