Micro-level economic factors and incentives in children's obesogenic behaviors

To date, most research on environments that may encourage children to eat too much and move too little, i.e. so-called obesogenic environments, has focused on physical and socio-cultural environments. Such environments determine what foods and physical activity opportunities are available and accessible (physical environment) and what is socially and culturally appropriate, acceptable and encouraged.The role of economic factors has been investigated to a much lesser extent. Our objective was to explore the association of micro-level economic factors and incentives with sports activities and intake of soft drinks and fruit juice in 10-12 year-old school children across Europe, and to explore price sensitivity in children's soft drink consumption and correlates of this price sensitivity. This study that was part of the ENERGY project was just published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity.
Data for the study originate from a cross-sectional survey undertaken in seven European countries (Belgium, Greece, Hungary, Netherlands, Norway, Slovenia and Spain) in 2010 among more than 7000 10-12 year-old school children and 6000 of their parents
Economic factors were found to be associated with children's sports participation and sugary drink consumption. Parents' financial support was found to be an important correlate of children's sports activities i.e. children whose parents financially supported their sports activities were more likely to engage in sports. Children's pocket money was a strong correlate of soft drink consumption; more pocket money was associated with more soft drinks. The majority of the responding children reported to expect that significantly higher prices of soft drinks would lead them to buy less soft drinks.