Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Oct;23(14):2563-2570.
doi: 10.1017/S136898002000083X. Epub 2020 Jun 11.

Food and beverage advertising in Hong Kong mass transit railway stations

Steven Ka Ho Lo  1 , Billy Yin Sing O  1 , Jimmy Chun Yu Louie  1
Affiliations

Food and beverage advertising in Hong Kong mass transit railway stations

Steven Ka Ho Lo et al. Public Health Nutr. 2020 Oct.

Abstract

Objectives: To examine the extent and characteristics of food and beverage (F&B) promotion in Hong Kong mass transit railway (MTR) stations in districts with different socioeconomic statuses (SES) and school density.

Design: All advertisements located in the eight selected MTR stations were recorded by photographs or videos, and classified into F&B and non-F&B. The percentage of F&B advertisements and unhealthy F&B being promoted, and common persuasive marketing strategies used in F&B advertisements were compared between low v. high SES districts and school zones v. non-school zones.

Setting: MTR stations in Hong Kong.

Participants: Not applicable.

Results: Of the 8064 advertisements documented, 861 (10·7 %) were F&B advertisements, promoting 1860 F&B items. More than half of the these were unhealthy foods. Stations in high SES districts or school zones tend to advertise more unhealthy items (high v. low SES: 55·8 v. 50·8 %, P = 0·049; school v. non-school: 60·8 v. 49·3 %, P < 0·001). More than one-third of the F&B advertisements recorded did not utilise any of those persuasive marketing techniques that were examined, and using models (13·9 %) or providing discounts (8·8 %) were the two most frequently used non-festival-related persuasive marketing strategies.

Conclusions: Unhealthy F&B advertising in MTR stations is prevalent regardless of SES and school density, and persuasive marketing strategies were infrequently used. These suggest that a ban on unhealthy F&B advertising around schools or the use of persuasive marketing strategies alone would be ineffective in Hong Kong. To align with the recommendation from WHO, a universal ban of junk food advertising should be enacted.

Keywords: Food promotion; Hong Kong; Mass transit railway station.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Russell SJ, Croker H & Viner RM (2019) The effect of screen advertising on children’s dietary intake: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Obes Rev 20, 554–568. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Folkvord F, Anschütz DJ, Boyland E et al. (2016) Food advertising and eating behavior in children. Curr Opin Behav Sci 9, 26–31.
    1. Powell LM, Szczypka G & Chaloupka FJ (2010) Trends in exposure to television food advertisements among children and adolescents in the United States. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 164, 794–802. - PubMed
    1. Ng SH, Kelly B, Se CH et al. (2015) Reading the mind of children in response to food advertising: a cross-sectional study of Malaysian schoolchildren’s attitudes towards food and beverages advertising on television. BMC Public Health 15, 1047. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Weihrauch-Blüher S & Wiegand S (2018) Risk factors and implications of childhood obesity. Curr Obes Rep 7, 254–259. - PubMed