[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ags/iefi16/244480.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Food Scares: Reflections and Reactions

Author

Listed:
  • Olsen, Nina Veflen
  • Storstad, Oddveig
  • Samuelsen, Bendik
  • Langsrud, Solveig
  • Hagtvedt, Therese
  • Gregersen, Fredrik
  • Ueland, Øydis
Abstract
Fall 2014, a researcher from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health stated in a newspaper interview that she never touched chicken with her bare hands. This interview was the beginning of a media storm, which resulted in a 25% sales drop for chicken within three months. To be able to understand why this interview had such a strong effect, we conducted an explorative case study. Findings from previous studies of food safety behavior indicate that consumers are irrational and that information is not enough to change behavior. Gigerenzer (2015), however, argue in a recent article that the claim that people are hardly educable lacks evidence. He cites Simon (1985) quote that “people are generally quite rational; that is, they usually have reasons for what they do” and claims that teaching people to become risk savvy is a true alternative to nudging. The aim of our study is to shed light on the rationality debate by exploring consumers’ reflections and reactions to the previously mentioned food scare article. Data from five focus-group interviews with Norwegian consumers of chicken were transcribed, content analyzed, and in-vitro coded, before we conducted a multiple correspondence analysis in PAST. We developed a graphical plot of our results, which we visually inspected and interpreted. The findings indicate that consumers do reflect when confronted with food scares. Some question the research behind the news, others wonder how dangerous this food scare is compared to other risks. Consumers are not irrational, even though their emotions co-occur more often with their behavior than their reflections.

Suggested Citation

  • Olsen, Nina Veflen & Storstad, Oddveig & Samuelsen, Bendik & Langsrud, Solveig & Hagtvedt, Therese & Gregersen, Fredrik & Ueland, Øydis, 2016. "Food Scares: Reflections and Reactions," 2016 International European Forum (151st EAAE Seminar), February 15-19, 2016, Innsbruck-Igls, Austria 244480, International European Forum on System Dynamics and Innovation in Food Networks.
    • Handle: RePEc:ags:iefi16:244480
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.244480
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/244480/files/28-B6_Olsen.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.244480?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cass R. Sunstein & Richard H. Thaler, 2003. "Libertarian paternalism is not an oxymoron," Conference Series ; [Proceedings], Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, vol. 48(Jun).
    2. Richard H. Thaler & Cass R. Sunstein, 2023. "Libertarian paternalism," Chapters, in: Cass R. Sunstein & Lucia A. Reisch (ed.), Research Handbook on Nudges and Society, chapter 1, pages 10-16, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Simon, Herbert A., 1985. "Human Nature in Politics: The Dialogue of Psychology with Political Science," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 79(2), pages 293-304, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 2017. "The overselling of globalization," Business Economics, Palgrave Macmillan;National Association for Business Economics, vol. 52(3), pages 129-137, July.
    2. Tasoff, Joshua & Letzler, Robert, 2014. "Everyone believes in redemption: Nudges and overoptimism in costly task completion," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 107(PA), pages 107-122.
    3. Ross Guest, 2010. "Policy Forum: Saving for Retirement: Policy Options to Increase Retirement Saving in Australia," Australian Economic Review, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, vol. 43(3), pages 293-301, September.
    4. Asen Ivanov, 2021. "Optimal pension plan default policies when employees are biased," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 23(3), pages 583-596, June.
    5. Hitoshi Matsushima, 2018. "Bank Runs and Minimum Reciprocity," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-1099, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    6. Schnellenbach, Jan, 2012. "Nudges and norms: On the political economy of soft paternalism," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 266-277.
    7. Scott Duke Kominers & Alexander Teytelboym & Vincent P Crawford, 2017. "An invitation to market design," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 33(4), pages 541-571.
    8. Blomquist, Soren & Micheletto, Luca, 2006. "Optimal redistributive taxation when government's and agents' preferences differ," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(6-7), pages 1215-1233, August.
    9. Claus Dierksmeier, 2018. "Qualitative Freedom and Cosmopolitan Responsibility," Humanistic Management Journal, Springer, vol. 2(2), pages 109-123, February.
    10. Nicole D. Sintov & P. Wesley Schultz, 2017. "Adjustable Green Defaults Can Help Make Smart Homes More Sustainable," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(4), pages 1-12, April.
    11. Ajla Cosic & Hana Cosic & Sebastian Ille, 2018. "Can nudges affect students' green behaviour? A field experiment," Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy, Society for the Advancement of Behavioral Economics (SABE), vol. 2(1), pages 107-111, March.
    12. Till Grüne-Yanoff, 2012. "Old wine in new casks: libertarian paternalism still violates liberal principles," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 38(4), pages 635-645, April.
    13. Christopher Jeffords, 2014. "Preference-directed regulation when ethical environmental policy choices are formed with limited information," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 46(2), pages 573-606, March.
    14. Cristiano Codagnone & Giuseppe Alessandro Veltri & Francesco Bogliacino & Francisco Lupiáñez-Villanueva & George Gaskell & Andriy Ivchenko & Pietro Ortoleva & Francesco Mureddu, 2016. "Labels as nudges? An experimental study of car eco-labels," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 33(3), pages 403-432, December.
    15. Markus Haavio & Kaisa Kotakorpi, 2012. "Sin Licenses Revisited," CESifo Working Paper Series 4010, CESifo.
    16. Schnellenbach, Jan & Schubert, Christian, 2015. "Behavioral political economy: A survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 395-417.
    17. Dohmen, Thomas & Falk, Armin & Huffman, David & Marklein, Felix & Sunde, Uwe, 2009. "Biased probability judgment: Evidence of incidence and relationship to economic outcomes from a representative sample," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(3), pages 903-915, December.
    18. van Dalen, Hendrik Peter & Henkens, Kene, 2018. "Do people really want freedom of choice? : Assessing preferences of pension holders," Other publications TiSEM 448e8a93-9ded-401f-9da0-7, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    19. Ashton, John K. & Hudson, Robert S., 2008. "Interest rate clustering in UK financial services markets," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 32(7), pages 1393-1403, July.
    20. Nicolas Aubert & Thomas Rapp, 2010. "Employee's investment behaviors in a company based savings plan," Finance, Presses universitaires de Grenoble, vol. 31(1), pages 5-32.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Agribusiness; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Food Security and Poverty; Risk and Uncertainty;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:iefi16:244480. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ilbonde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.