Rieger Jörg, Weible Daniela, Anders Sven
Thuenen Institute of Farm Economics, Bundesallee 50, 38116 Braunschweig, Germany.
Thuenen Institute of Market Analysis, Bundesallee 50, 38116 Braunschweig, Germany.
Appetite. 2017 Jun 1;113:200-214. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2017.02.038. Epub 2017 Mar 1.
In the aftermath of food scandals, household perceptions about the health risks posed by failures in food safety play a central role in determining their mitigating behavior. A stream of literature has shown that factors including media coverage of a scandal, risk perceptions, trust in food safety information, and consumption habits matter. This paper deviates from the standard assumption of a homogeneous response to media information across all households exposed to a food scandal. Instead, we present an innovative multi-method approach to investigate the impacts of household heterogeneity in underlying psychological and behavioral, media usage patterns and consumption habits on poultry demand in the aftermath of the 2011 German dioxin scandal. The analysis employs weekly retail purchase and matching survey data for 6133 households covering pre and post scandal periods. The supplementary survey data elicits household respondent's risk perceptions and risk attitudes, product label and media information behavior. Initial factor and cluster analysis identify household segments based on psychographic and behavioral indicators. We then estimate a correlated random effect Tobit model to account for clustered household responses to quantify the influence of media effects distinguishing between short-term risk mitigation behavior and longer-term habit persistence. Our results confirm significant heterogeneity in household's media-induced risk-mitigation responses to the dioxin scandal across three clusters. However, we find that habit persistence in the form of consumption preferences for the affected products were able to largely compensate for demand-reducing media effects across household clusters. Considering heterogeneity in household's risk mitigation behaviors to food scandals holds implications for policy makers and food industry alike.
在食品丑闻之后，家庭对食品安全失误所带来的健康风险的认知在决定其缓解行为方面起着核心作用。一系列文献表明，包括丑闻的媒体报道、风险认知、对食品安全信息的信任以及消费习惯等因素都很重要。本文偏离了对所有接触食品丑闻的家庭对媒体信息做出同质化反应的标准假设。相反，我们提出了一种创新的多方法途径，以研究2011年德国二恶英丑闻后家庭在潜在心理和行为、媒体使用模式以及消费习惯方面的异质性对家禽需求的影响。该分析采用了涵盖丑闻前后时期的6133户家庭的每周零售购买和匹配调查数据。补充调查数据引出了家庭受访者的风险认知和风险态度、产品标签及媒体信息行为。初步的因子分析和聚类分析基于心理和行为指标确定了家庭细分群体。然后，我们估计了一个相关随机效应托比特模型，以考虑家庭聚类反应，从而量化媒体效应的影响，区分短期风险缓解行为和长期习惯持续性。我们的结果证实了在三个聚类中，家庭对二恶英丑闻的媒体引发的风险缓解反应存在显著异质性。然而，我们发现，受影响产品消费偏好形式的习惯持续性能够在很大程度上弥补各家庭聚类中降低需求的媒体效应。考虑到家庭对食品丑闻的风险缓解行为的异质性，对政策制定者和食品行业都有启示意义。
