Information and the trade-off between food safety and food security in rural markets: Experimental evidence from Malawi
通过在马拉维农村进行随机对照实验，研究发现食品安全培训能提高消费者对安全花生的需求，尤其在粮食短缺季节，培训组对安全标签的溢价增加，而未培训组的溢价消失。
We implemented a clustered randomized control trial with experimental auctions among 1,098 rural households in Malawi to evaluate whether providing training about food safety increased demand for safe groundnut. We measured the impact of training on demand for observable and unobservable dimensions of quality, at harvest and in the lean season. We found that the control group who was not trained valued sorted grains (an indicator of observable quality) only. At harvest, both trained and untrained consumers placed statistically equal premiums on food safety labeling (an indicator of otherwise-unobservable quality). However, in the lean season, untrained consumers’ premiums for food safety labeling disappeared, while trained consumers’ premiums for food safety labeling increased.