The effectiveness of interventions based on the protection motivation theory on healthy eating behaviors: A systematic review study

One sixth of the diseases in all countries of the world are found to be caused by malnutrition and improper food selection at different times and under various conditions. In this study, we aimed to investigate the effect of interventions based on the protection motivation theory on healthy eating behaviors in a systematic way. All articles were systematically retrieved from information sources, including Persian databases of Iran-Medex and SID as well as English databases as PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, ScienceDirect, and Google Scholar. The keywords were as follows: healthy eating behavior, protection motivation theory, behavior, healthy nutrition and intervention. In the first search, 247 articles were obtained. After reviewing them in terms of the inclusion criteria, 8 articles were included in this study. The duration of the intervention was between 1 week and 24 months and the nutritional behaviors of the individuals were studied during this period. Lectures, questions and answers, the use of telephone calls and paper educational messages, and food were often used in the context of information transfer. The results indicate the effectiveness of protection motivation theory on improving the nutritional behaviors of individuals. The results of the previous intervention studies indicated that the greater the perceived barriers to protective behavior, the less motivated a person in performing protective behaviors. A positive and statistically significant correlation was also found between self-efficacy and protection motivation in the investigated studies.