Abstract
Many characteristics of the market, school and family environments contribute to making or maintaining frequent soda consumption a social norm, particularly among youth. In such circumstances, soda/sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) taxation could be used as “alarm signal” facilitating the emergence of a “moderate consumption” norm, provided the price hike is sufficiently salient, the population aware of the tax, and these two conditions sustained by a communication campaign. Unfortunately, such effects remain weakly documented and counterproductive effects cannot be ruled out. SSB taxation could also be used as a coercive signal pushing manufacturers to move beyond voluntary commitments, be this in terms of product reformulation and/or in terms of marketing to children. On this particular point, the evidence remains mixed and anecdotal. A tax linearly indexed on the sugar content of the beverages or based on a threshold of sugar content above which beverages are taxed may provide additional benefits. Here again, it remains to be demonstrated.
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Notes
- 1.
Baril et al. (2012, p. 6) define social norms as “socially shared rules and behavioural models, based on common values and implying a pressure in favour of the adoption of a given behaviour, at the risk of disapproval from the society or the reference group” (free translation).
- 2.
This study aimed to collect a minimum number of questionnaires by school (30) and by region (100) in order to strengthen the statistical validity of the results. In fact, 36 out of the 87 schools and 2 out of the 14 regions surveyed did not reach these minimum numbers. Design weights were not consequently adjusted (Hovington and RESQ 2012). Therefore, even if the survey is based on a very large sample of students, it should be noted that it is not a probability-based survey.
- 3.
The propensity to reduce consumption was higher for “special foods” (e.g. energy drinks) than for common foods (e.g. butter) (Mustafa 2013).
- 4.
For example, 7.4 % reported being very “well aware” of the French soda tax (implemented since January 2012), whereas 32.2 % reported “having heard” about it without being “sure”, and 60.4 % said they had “never heard” about it (Mustafa 2013).
- 5.
Reducing SSBs' sugar content is recognized to be a technological and marketing challenge, since taste is a critical choice parameter for SSB consumers.
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Le Bodo, Y., Paquette, MC., De Wals, P. (2016). Potential “Signal” Effects from Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Taxation. In: Taxing Soda for Public Health. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33648-0_11
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