Pathos & ethos: emotions and willingness to pay for tobacco products

Francesco Bogliacino, Cristiano Codagnone, Giuseppe Alessandro Veltri, Amitav Chakravarti, Pietro Ortoleva, George Gaskell, Andriy Ivchenko, Francisco Lupiáñez-Villanueva, Francesco Mureddu () and Caroline Rudisill

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

Abstract: In this article we use data from a multi-country Randomized Control Trial study on the effect of anti-tobacco pictorial warnings on an individual’s emotions and behavior. By exploiting the exogenous variations of images as an instrument, we are able to identify the effect of emotional responses. We use a range of outcome variables, from cognitive (risk perception and depth of processing) to behavioural (willingness to buy and willingness to pay). Our findings suggest that the odds of buying a tobacco product can be reduced by 80% if the negative affect elicited by the images increases by one standard deviation. More importantly from a public policy perspective, not all emotions behave alike, as eliciting shame, anger, or distress proves more effective in reducing smoking than fear and disgust.

JEL-codes: C99 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-10-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-hea and nep-neu
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published in PLOS ONE, 20, October, 2015, 10(10), pp. e0139542. ISSN: 1932-6203

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Journal Article: Pathos & Ethos: Emotions and Willingness to Pay for Tobacco Products (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:64127

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