Balancing the Health Risks and Benefits of Seafood: How Does Available Guidance Affect Consumer Choices?

Seafood species vary in their health benefits (e.g., from omega-3 fatty acids) and risks (e.g., from methylmercury or polychlorobiphenyls). Reflecting these risks and benefits, multiple public and private organizations offer guidance to consumers on seafood consumption. The effect of this guidance i...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inAmerican journal of agricultural economics Vol. 99; no. 4; pp. 1056 - 1077
Main Authors Uchida, Hirotsugu, Roheim, Cathy A., Johnston, Robert J.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Malden Oxford University Press 01.07.2017
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Subjects
Agricultural economics
Ambiguity
Aquaculture
Bayesian analysis
Bayesian risk learning
Consumer behavior
Consumers
difference‐in‐difference estimation
Dimethylmercury
Efficacy
experimental auction
Fatty acids
Health information
Health risk assessment
Health risks
Information content
Learning
Machine learning
Mercury (metal)
Methylmercury
PCB
Polychlorinated biphenyls
Salmon
Seafood
seafood demand
Species
Swordfish
Xiphias gladius
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:Seafood species vary in their health benefits (e.g., from omega-3 fatty acids) and risks (e.g., from methylmercury or polychlorobiphenyls). Reflecting these risks and benefits, multiple public and private organizations offer guidance to consumers on seafood consumption. The effect of this guidance is unknown; previous literature has been unable to disentangle the effects of messages with differing health information, provided by different sources, on demand for different types of seafood. The result is ambiguity regarding the drivers of observed changes in seafood demand. This study investigates the effect of health risk and benefit information on preferences for wild and farmed salmon and swordfish, three species targeted by consumer guidance. The analysis applies an experimental auction with seafood consumers informed by a Bayesian risk-learning model. The model provides a systematic way to disentangle effects on seafood demand, for example, by evaluating whether changes in demand for different species are due to information content or source. Using this approach, we test the effect of guidance provided by four different public and private groups in the United States. Difference-in-difference tests find no impact of health benefit information regardless of source or message, but find multiple effects of health risk information that vary across different types of guidance. These findings suggest that current guidance does not improve consumers' ability to balance health risks and benefits. We also identify potential avenues to improve the efficacy of this guidance.
Bibliography:This project was supported by Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grant no. 2009–04125 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and the Rhode Island Agricultural Experiment Station (AES #5448). The authors thank Seth Tuler, Social and Environmental Research Institute, Massachusetts, for his expert advice on risk communication in the early stages of this project, and our former graduate research assistants Mihoko Tegawa, Adam Stemle, and Huiquang Wang, for their assistance. The authors also thank three anonymous reviewers and the editor for suggestions that substantially improved the manuscript. Finally, the authors acknowledge the helpful comments of participants at the North American Association of Fisheries Economists Forum in St. Petersburg, Florida, in May 2013, the Workshop on Salmon Aquaculture and Seafood Markets in Ås, Norway, in August 2013, and the International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade Conference in Brisbane, Australia, in July 2014. Any errors are the sole responsibility of the authors.
ISSN:0002-9092
1467-8276
DOI:10.1093/ajae/aax025