IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-01019042.html

Can labeling and information policies harm consumers?

Author

Listed:
  • Jayson L. Lusk

    (Department of Agricultural Economics - OSU - Oklahoma State University [Stillwater])

  • Stephan Marette

    (ECO-PUB - Economie Publique - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - AgroParisTech)

Abstract

Information and labeling are popular food policy instruments because of their presumedpositive influence on consumer welfare. In a one-good case with unlimited attention, we showconsumer welfare is always improved with the provision of accurate information. However, ina two-good case with limited attention, we show that consumer welfare is not always improvedwith the provision of accurate information. When attention is constrained, welfare may fall withinformation provision policies irrespective of their costs. The results suggest information andlabeling polices may sometimes be counterproductive when attention is limited.

Suggested Citation

  • Jayson L. Lusk & Stephan Marette, 2012. "Can labeling and information policies harm consumers?," Post-Print hal-01019042, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01019042
    DOI: 10.1515/1542-0485.1373
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sunstein, Cass R., 2021. "Viewpoint: Are food labels good?," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 99(C).
    2. Garavaglia, Christian & Mariani, Paolo, 2015. "How Much Do Consumers Value PDO Certifications? Estimates of WTP for PDO Dry-Cured Ham in Italy," 145th Seminar, April 14-15, 2015, Parma, Italy 200376, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    3. Joseph, Siny & Lavoie, Nathalie & Caswell, Julie A., 2014. "Implementing COOL: Comparative welfare effects of different labeling schemes," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 14-25.
    4. Ray, Susweta & Giannakas, Konstantinos, 2021. "Market and Welfare Analysis of Excess Information in Food Claims," 2021 Annual Meeting, August 1-3, Austin, Texas 313999, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    5. Marette Stéphan, 2014. "Economic Benefits Coming from the Absence of Labels Proliferation," Journal of Agricultural & Food Industrial Organization, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 65-73, January.
    6. Kent D. Messer & Marco Costanigro & Harry M. Kaiser, 2017. "Labeling Food Processes: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 39(3), pages 407-427.
    7. Nadia A Streletskaya & Jura Liaukonyte & Harry M Kaiser, 2019. "Absence labels: How does information about production practices impact consumer demand?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(6), pages 1-18, June.
    8. Christian Garavaglia & Paolo Mariani, 2017. "How Much Do Consumers Value Protected Designation of Origin Certifications? Estimates of willingness to Pay for PDO Dry‐Cured Ham in Italy," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 33(3), pages 403-423, June.
    9. Olivier Bonroy & Christos Constantatos, 2015. "On the Economics of Labels: How Their Introduction Affects the Functioning of Markets and the Welfare of All Participants," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 97(1), pages 239-259.
    10. Birg, Laura & Voßwinkel, Jan S., 2018. "Minimum quality standards and compulsory labeling when environmental quality is not observable," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 62-78.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    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:hal:journl:hal-01019042. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.