Parental response to health risk information: experimental results on willingness-to-pay for safer infant milk formula

Isabell Goldberg, Jutta Roosen () and Rodolfo M. Nayga
Additional contact information
Isabell Goldberg: Department of Food Economics and Consumption Studies, University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany, Postal: Department of Food Economics and Consumption Studies, University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany

Health Economics, 2009, vol. 18, issue 5, pages 503-518

Abstract: Enterobacter sakazakii, a pathogen that can be found in powdered infant milk formula, can cause adverse health effects on infants. Using Vickrey auction, this study examines parents' willingness to pay (WTP) for a quality assurance label on powdered infant milk formula. The influence of ambiguity with the incidence rate information and provision of safe-handling information on WTP are also evaluated using three experimental treatments. Our findings generally imply that parents significantly value a quality assurance label. The mean price premium parents are willing to pay for the safer and quality assurance labelled powdered infant milk formula ranges from 61 to 133 Eurocents per 100 grams (53-116% of the base price per 100 grams) depending on the treatment. While no ambiguity effects are generally found, provision of safe-handling information significantly reduced WTP to 39-69 Eurocents per 100 grams depending on the treatment. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations Track citations by RSS feed

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/hec.1381 Link to full text; subscription required (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:18:y:2009:i:5:p:503-518

Access Statistics for this article

Health Economics is edited by Alan Maynard, John Hutton and Andrew Jones

More articles in Health Economics from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Series data maintained by Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing ().