Public or Private Production of Food Safety: What Do U.S. Consumers Want?

V. Smith, Carol Mansfield and Aaron Strong

No 14287, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper reports estimates of consumers' preferences for plans to improve food safety. The plans are distinguished based on whether they address the ex ante risk of food borne illness or the ex post effects of the illness. They are also distinguished based on whether they focus on a public good -- reducing risk of illness for all consumers or allowing individual households to reduce their private risks of contracting a food borne pathogen. Based on a National Survey conducted in 2007 using the Knowledge Network internet panel our findings indicate consumers favor ex ante risk reductions and are willing to pay approximately $250 annually to reduce the risk of food borne illness. Moreover, they prefer private to public approaches and would not support efforts to reduce the severity of cases of illness over risk reductions.

JEL-codes: H42 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-pbe and nep-reg
Note: EEE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14287.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:nbr:nberwo:14287

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14287

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().