Distinct but Not Apart? Stigma Reduction and Cross-Industry Evaluative Spillovers: The Case of Medical Marijuana Legalization
研究污名减少如何从焦点行业溢出到其他共享同一道德认可属性的行业，以美国多州医用大麻合法化为例，发现合法化减少了“恶习”污名，并通过患者登记系统强化健康安全属性，进而对酒精行业产生积极评价溢出，但对烟草行业无此效应。
Previous research on stigma reduction has been primarily confined to single industries. However, industry boundaries are porous in the eyes of audience members and can hardly act as artificial confines to moral reevaluations. We contend that evaluative spillovers induced by stigma reduction in a focal industry diffuse to other industries that share the same vilifying label when (a) they possess the morally approved attribute that underlies the reduction of stigma, and (b) the morally approved attribute is embedded in formal rules and procedures that ensure the desired purposes. Empirically, we focus our tests on the legalization of marijuana as a medicine in several U.S. states during the period 2000–2015, which has reduced the “vice” stigma around marijuana by highlighting the “health safety” attribute of marijuana, namely its safe consumption and potential health benefits. We show that legalization generated evaluative spillovers to other “vice” industries sharing the same health safety attribute as marijuana (i.e., alcohol), but not to those that did not share it (i.e., tobacco). Those spillovers were primarily observed when the law was accompanied by a patient registration system that highlighted the health safety attribute of marijuana by limiting its use to medical purposes.