Why Choosing Healthy Foods is Hard, and How to Help: Presenting the 4Ps Framework for Behavior Change

The pursuit of long-term goals is often thwarted by immediate desires--a pattern particularly common in food choices. Research in economics, psychology, and marketing has identified a rich supply of unrelated small influences or “nudges” that can help make healthy choices easier, aligning behaviors with intentions. We organize these streams of research using a novel taxonomy, the 4Ps Framework for Behavior Change, to integrate nudges within a dual-system model of consumer choice and to provide suggestions for extensions. We conclude with a discussion of some practical challenges facing researchers in this area.