Taxes, Subsidies, and Advertising Efficacy in Changing Eating Behavior: An Experimental Study

Nadia Streletskaya, Pimbucha Rusmevichientong, Wansopin Amatyakul and Harry Kaiser

Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 2014, vol. 36, issue 1, 146-174

Abstract: Using a lab experiment with 258 adult non-student participants, we examined whether unhealthy foods taxes, healthy foods subsidies, anti-obesity advertising, and healthy foods advertising have an impact on changing consumers' choices of lunch items and the nutrient content of their choices for a selected meal. A difference-in-difference regression model was used to determine the efficacy of the various policy treatments. The results indicate that the unhealthy foods tax, healthy foods advertising, and unhealthy foods tax combined with anti-obesity advertising significantly reduced the content of some nutrients of concern, such as calories, calories from fat, carbohydrates, and cholesterol in meal selections. We also find that when combined with healthy foods subsidy, the healthy foods advertising has very little effect on nutrient consumption; the anti-obesity advertising on its own, however, is not efficient at changing dietary behavior. We discuss the policy implications of our findings and venues for future research.

Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/aepp/ppt032 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:apecpp:v:36:y:2014:i:1:p:146-174.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy is currently edited by Timothy Park, Tomislav Vukina and Ian Sheldon

More articles in Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().