Food Beliefs: Elicitation, Estimation and Implications for Labeling Policy
研究消费者如何利用产品属性和自身信念形成质量预期，通过排序实验揭示食品标签可能误导消费者，为标签政策提供参考。
Abstract We present a model in which consumers use product attributes (or labels) and their own beliefs to form expectations about the quality of a product. We use best–worst scaling to elicit beliefs, and study how information may influence these beliefs. In our ranking experiments, participants sort different milk products according to (perceived) nutritional or environmental quality, and we use the resulting choice data to recover beliefs econometrically. In a nutritional quality experiment, we measure how food labels (i.e. front‐of‐package, back‐of‐package and ratio of recommended to restricted nutrients) alter consumers’ beliefs, finding that truthful attribute information may sometimes mislead consumers. The discussion explains how similar experiments could be used to distinguish informative labels from marketing messages.