Estimation of the Impact of Foodborne Salmonellosis on Consumer Well-Being in Hungary

Ágnes Vajda, László Ózsvári, Dávid Szakos and Gyula Kasza
Additional contact information
Ágnes Vajda: Department of Veterinary Forensics and Economics, University of Veterinary Medicine Budapest, 1078 Budapest, Hungary
László Ózsvári: Department of Veterinary Forensics and Economics, University of Veterinary Medicine Budapest, 1078 Budapest, Hungary
Dávid Szakos: Department of Veterinary Forensics and Economics, University of Veterinary Medicine Budapest, 1078 Budapest, Hungary
Gyula Kasza: National Food Chain Safety Office, 1024 Budapest, Hungary

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 19, 1-10

Abstract: In Hungary, salmonellosis is one of the most frequent foodborne illnesses. According to our estimation, based on a representative consumer survey with 1001 respondents, the annual number of salmonellosis cases exceeded 90,000, which was 18 times higher than the officially reported data. Salmonellosis infections impose significant direct and indirect costs to the health care system, to companies (as employers) and to households. This study focused on the cost to households by analysing well-being losses due to Salmonella infections, for which the WTP (willingness-to-pay) method was used. WTP measures the cost that an individual would pay to avoid an undesirable harm or health outcome. For estimating WTP, 456 respondents gave quantifiable answers. The average WTP to avoid salmonellosis was 86.3 EUR. Based on this data, the total consumer well-being loss could be estimated to be about 7.87 million EUR per year in Hungary. These results indicate that consumers’ well-being losses alone would necessitate further interventions for Salmonella reduction.

Keywords: salmonellosis; foodborne illness; cost of illness; WTP; consumer well-being (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/19/10131/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/19/10131/ (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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:19:p:10131-:d:644007

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().