The influence of timing, location and social setting on hedonic and emotional evaluations of past eating experiences

Abstract

Purpose

Our hedonic and emotional evaluations of the foods we encounter in daily life are predictive of whether we will choose to consume these foods in the future. Given the context-dependent nature of these evaluations and the rise in studies set in naturalistic and ecologically valid consumption settings, it is crucial that we examine the impact of contextual variables on our current consumer emotion measurement methods.

Design/methodology/approach

Three important factors that influence meal-evoked emotion – meal time, location and social setting – were explored via online survey of 866 English-speaking adults from all over the world. Respondents were asked to recall three meals they had consumed in the past week and report on their subjective liking and emotional associations. Subjective liking was measured with a labelled affective magnitude scale and emotion was measured using EsSense25.

Findings

Dinner meals, meals eaten at the home of a family member or friend, and meals eaten with one's spouse or partner were rated highest in subjective liking. Meals eaten at work or alone were associated with the lowest intensities of positive emotion.

Originality/value

The majority of investigations into meal context and emotion have measured consumers' emotional associations in the moment and in the laboratory. The present study characterises the influence of contextual variables on the emotional associations of past eating experiences in naturalistic settings.

Citation

Nath, E.C., Cannon, P.R. and Philipp, M.C. (2020), "The influence of timing, location and social setting on hedonic and emotional evaluations of past eating experiences", British Food Journal, Vol. 122 No. 7, pp. 2203-2217. https://doi.org/10.1108/BFJ-09-2019-0674