Strengths and limitations
This study was a pre-registered randomised controlled trial in a realistic food choice environment and the first to test the effect of an environmental label on food choices in a virtual supermarket. Using questionnaires, we confirmed that the label had been seen, understood and used by a majority of the participants in the labelling condition.Our study is unique compared to the previous studies that have tested environmental labelling in online supermarkets as consumers may not have the same shopping behaviours in (virtual) stores compared to online. In particular, it has been shown that contrary to online food environments where factual information is more important, sensory attributes are stronger drivers of in-store food choices [We could only include a limited number of food items in the virtual supermarket. We decided to only include items that could be part of a main dish because meat-based products are the food items with the worst impact on the environment and are usually consumed as part of main dishes [In order to study cross-category substitutions we only included one version of each food product and therefore only one brand to choose from. Products with more familiar brands may have been more chosen by the participants. We observed no difference in familiarity and liking of food products between the two labelling conditions suggesting that the participants selected food products they would have been likely to choose in both conditions, they thus reshaped their food choices within a selection of foods that they liked and were familiar to.