Are Mercury Advisories Effective? Information, Education, and Fish Consumption

Timothy Beatty, Jay Shimshack and Michael Ward

No 502, Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University from Department of Economics, Tufts University

Abstract: This paper examines responses to a national FDA advisory urging at-risk individuals to limit store-bought fish consumption due to the dangers of methyl-mercury. We address this issue using parametric and nonparametric methods, including recently developed tests of stochastic dominance. Both education and newspaper readership were important determinants of consumption response, suggesting that information acquisition and assimilation are key factors for risk avoidance. While the advisory was effective for some groups, we do not find a response among the relatively large group of at-risk households which met neither the education nor readership criteria.

JEL-codes: D12 I18 Q53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://ase.tufts.edu/econ/papers/200502.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Mercury advisories: Information, education, and fish consumption (2007)
Working Paper: Mercury advisories: Information, education, and fish consumption (2007)
Working Paper: Are Mercury Advisories Effective? Inofrmation, Education, and Fish Consumption (2004)
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:tuf:tuftec:0502

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University from Department of Economics, Tufts University Medford, MA 02155, USA.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Marcus Weir ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).