Does Health Information Matter for Modifying Consumption? A Field Experiment Measuring the Impact of Risk Information on Fish Consumption

Jutta Roosen, Stéphan Marette (), Sandrine Blanchemanche and Philippe Verger

Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) Publications from Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University

Abstract: A field experiment was conducted in France to evaluate the impact of health information on fish consumption. A warning given to the treatment group revealed the risks of methylmercury contamination in fish and also gave consumption recommendations. Using difference-in-differences estimation, we show that this warning led to a significant but relatively weak decrease in fish consumption. However, consumption of the most contaminated fish did not decrease despite advice to avoid consumption of these types of fish. Accompanying questionnaires show that consumers imperfectly memorize the fish species quoted in the warning. The results point to the relatively poor efficacy of a complex health message, despite its use by health agencies around the world.

Keywords: econometrics; field experiment; fish consumption; health information; nutrition. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C9 D8 I1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-cbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.card.iastate.edu/products/publications/pdf/06wp434.pdf Full Text (application/pdf)
https://www.card.iastate.edu/products/publications/synopsis/?p=1026 Online Synopsis (text/html)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does Health Information Matter for Modifying Consumption? A Field Experiment Measuring the Impact of Risk Information on Fish Consumption (2009)
Journal Article: Does Health Information Matter for Modifying Consumption? A Field Experiment Measuring the Impact of Risk Information on Fish Consumption (2009)
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:ias:cpaper:06-wp434

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) Publications from Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().