Less is more: information overload in the labelling of fish and aquaculture products

Francesco Bogliacino, Rafael Charris, Cristiano Codagnone, Frans Folkvord, George Gaskell, Camilo Gómez Cangrejo, Giovanni Liva and Felipe Montealegre

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Food labels have been used extensively for informing consumers to make more rational and safer decisions. However, this carries the risk of confusing consumers with multiple claims which may distract from key information such as the country of origin of the product. To inform the European legislation, we have tested labels on fish and aquaculture products in three separate experiments, across several European Member States. The main results showed that mandatory information is better recalled than voluntary information. In addition, consumers perceive, and process differently labels for farmed and caught fish, relying more on quality claims for the former. Nonetheless, in both cases, while they value visual information, they are likely to be confused by voluntary claims including flags. Finally, when additional claims are added step by step, they lead to a decrease in accuracy of recall and comprehension. In sum, less is better, because too much information on food labels lead to cognitive overload and consumer confusion.

Keywords: fish; iInformation overload; label; recall task; trustworthiness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D12 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17 pages
Date: 2023-04-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-env and nep-ger
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published in Food Policy, 1, April, 2023, 116. ISSN: 0306-9192

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/118660/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Less is more: Information overload in the labelling of fish and aquaculture products (2023)
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:ehl:lserod:118660

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().