What Can Help Us To Eat More Healthily? A Propositional Inventory of Implementation Intentions
(A2019-4172)

AUTHORS

Irene Vilà, EAE Business School

KEYWORDS

healthy-eating; implementation-intentions; propositional-inventory

ABSTRACT

Implementation intentions is a widely studied volitional intervention to improve healthy eating behaviours. Gollwitzer (1993) defined implementation intentions as a type of intention that connects a certain goal –directed behaviour with an anticipated situational context, taking the form “if-then”. Implementation intentions have been applied to a great number of desired behaviours, such as healthy eating, presenting good results. (Gollwitzer & Sheeran, 2006). The aim of this paper is to describe a propositional inventory (a systematic review was conducted to generate the sample of primary studies) that allows the application of implementation intentions to improve healthy eating in optimal conditions depending on the situation. Four main areas to study were found: motivation, cognition, volition and intervention execution. The intended contribution is to improve healthy eating behaviours by providing some useful guidelines for marketers and decision makers to formulate effective plans and use implementation intention intervention in practical contexts.