The effect of intervention on health behaviour and ethical consumption: A cross-national study

ABSTRACT Background To my knowledge, there is very little information on health behaviour and ethical consumption to be studied in Vietnam. Also, the study on the effectiveness of health intervention to the Vietnamese population is limited. Moreover, there is a need to investigate the health behaviour and ethical judgements of consumers across a broad multi-cultural cross-section of the adult population. The present study is designed to address this research need. The health behaviour and ethical consumption are compared for people from a developing country (Vietnam) and a developed country (the UK). Objective The aim of this paper is to implement a study on a sample of Vietnamese participants to examine whether health behaviour changes. Moreover, the purpose of the study will extend to make a comparison of the health lifestyle behaviours of participants from two diverse cultures and economies: citizens residing in Vietnam and citizens residing in the UK. Methods A cross-national survey is conducted among Vietnamese and British population. Data on demographics, ethical consumption, dietary habit and physical activity are collected. The study applies a 2 x 2 experimental design (intervention vs. control) x (baseline vs. follow-up). The between - participants variable is the assignment into either the intervention group or the control group. The within - participants variable is the time in which questionnaires are managed: baseline or 7 days follow-up (i.e. intervention period). The participants are randomly assigned to the intervention or control group. The intervention method to be used is information leaflet which mentions 5 health and lifestyles guidelines. The Mann Whitney u-test is performed with all outcome measures across the control and intervention condition. Correlations of ethical consumption, dietary habit and physical activity are identified using multivariable regression analysis. Results A total of 91 Vietnamese and 30 British completes the baseline questionnaire. The Vietnamese participants are randomly divided into control group (51 participants) and intervention group (40 participants). All the British participants belong to the intervention group. After the intervention period of 7 days, 14 British and 58 Vietnamese complete final questionnaire. Vietnamese spend more money on meat and poultry (p=0.0172), fruit and vegetable (p=0.0034) whereas British spend more money on alcohol (p=0.0008). Vietnamese are more likely than British to have better ethical consumption behaviour (p=0.0404). However, no significant difference is observed in terms of dietary habit and physical activity for the two countries. The designed intervention leaflet does not have influence on health behaviour and ethical consumption for the participants in the study. Nevertheless, more than 80% of participants acknowledge the usefulness of the intervention leaflet and near 50% of participants follow the guidelines occasionally and very frequently. Gender and education are found to have significant impacts on health and ethical consumption behaviour variables. However, there is no correlation of these variables and age and marital status. Conclusions The study provide a valuable basis for the comparison regarding to dietary habit, physical activity and ethical consumption of Vietnam and British. The intervention effect is not found in this study. The association of health and ethical consumption behaviour is observed with gender and education but not with age and marital status