The Value and Cost of Restaurant Calorie Labels: Results from a Field Experiment

Brenna Ellison, Jayson Lusk and David W. Davis

No 123529, 2012 AAEA/EAAE Food Environment Symposium from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: Using field experiment data, we estimate a structural model of consumer demand to determine the value of information for restaurant menu labels. Our experimental design allows us to compare the effectiveness of calorie labels to a “fat tax” at reducing caloric intake. Results show numeric labels did not influence demand, but symbolic traffic light labels reduced the marginal utility of caloric intake. Our model projects both labels would reduce intake more than high-calorie taxes or low-calorie subsidies. Ultimately, traffic light calorie labels led to the largest reduction in caloric intake but also one of the largest reductions in restaurant net returns.

Keywords: Food; Consumption/Nutrition/Food; Safety (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/123529/files/E ... antCalorieLables.pdf (application/pdf)

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:ags:aaeafe:123529

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.123529

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2012 AAEA/EAAE Food Environment Symposium from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().