2. The Problem
How do we get people to eat more vegetables?
•
Facebook page?
•
Meetup group?
•
Text messaging?
•
Coaching?
•
Cooking Classes?
3. The Solution
Veggie Friends Facebook Group
• Easy to recruit, manage, collaborate
• Targets specific eating behavior (innovation)
Goals:
• Inspire
• Build confidence & skills
• Make it fun
4. Theories of Change
Social Contagion (David More likely to eat veggies if your Facebook
Hamilton, PhD)
friends do!
Behavior Modeling
Group leaders post recipes initially
Self-Efficacy
Build confidence as try recipes and post their
own
Cues to Action
Posting and comments frequently appear
Improved
Associations
Fun atmosphere would improve association
with veggies
5. The Brainstorm
1st: Health Foodies? self-talk?
health coach? farmers market
tours?
2nd: Where is our real passion?
Getting people to eat more
veggies!
6. Trying to make it work
2nd attempt:
Facebook Post & Sending out a
Facebook Message -- 52 responses
1st attempt
Catchy
Facebook
copy with a
link --
7. The Group and Week 1
The Facebook
Group
Week 1: Each team
member posted a
recipe (1 group
member a day)
9. Week 3
Team members
did not post
recipes once
daily
Veggie Competition (we
notified participants on
Facebook twice)
10. Survey Process
Sent email and put out
a facebook post once a
week to remind
participants to fill out
survey (measuring
vegetable intake)
11. Demographics
28 years old in average (range 21-55)
Ethnicity
●
71% White
●
2% Black
●
5% Asian
●
17% Hispanic
Education
•
•
•
•
3% HS or GED
26% Some college or AA
41% Bachelors
29% Graduate or Professional degree
Marital Status
•
•
•
67% Single
22% Married
10% Living with Partner
Do you have children under the age of 18 years old?
•
Yes: 27%
12. Facebook Participation Data
•
15% (9 people) posted a
recipe that they made
Likes
Comments
Posts
Week 1
57
37
7
Week 2
25
17
6
Week 3
6
5
2
16. Thoughts about Vegetables
POSITIVE
healthy, yummy, nutritious, delicious
NEUTRAL
food, green, veggie tales, salad, green giant
NEGATIVE
gross, weird flavors, hate waiting for them to
ripen, hate that they need preparing, cutting
peeling, Not my favorite but I’ll eat them, hard
to prepare, bland, tasteless
17. Potluck and Thanksgiving
•
•
•
Potluck: only 1 person posted (not even a
recipe)
Thanksgiving: only 1 person posted a recipe
So, the events where we tried to have people
contribute to the facebook group, did not
pan out
19. Conclusion
What we learned and challenges/risks and how to
overcome
•
•
•
•
Should have done research prior to starting
•
Constantly the same people posting and liking (but that doesn’t mean that
people aren’t increasing their vegetable intake or improving their
confidence that didn’t contribute to the group)
•
Maybe some people weren’t interested in posting and interacting, or had
Initially people were really excited, but participation decreased over time
We asked friends to join the group - bias
It is hard to get other people to actively participate in posting their own
recipes
20. Conclusion
Future Plans
• A lot of work on our own part, very hard to make a business out of it (no
business model of having a FB group, more for fun)
•
Research Purpose:
o No specific previous studies on FB and vegetable intake
o Previous Facebook and text messaging study conducted with results
showing positive impact on weight-loss
•
It was fun, maybe we would continue it with just our friends
