Research Accomplishment Reports 2007

Consumer Choice Regarding Food and Health

L.J. Maynard
Department of Agricultural Economics

 

Project Description

Food consumers are a traditional land-grant clientele whose needs for credible public information are stronger than ever. Consumers receive complex, often conflicting health messages regarding food consumption. Understanding how they respond can help educate consumers directly, improve the effectiveness of public health messages, and aid food growers and processors in marketing healthy food.

During 2007, one journal article, two conference abstracts, and two working papers relevant to this program were published, and two journal articles and a book chapter were accepted for publication in 2008. Two additional journal articles are in review. Six program-related presentations were given at professional conferences, two grants were awarded, and two graduate students were employed on program-related projects. Most of this productivity is the result of projects begun during 2006 while I was on sabbatical at the University of Alberta. I am a member of the consumer and market demand Ag. Policy research network, based in Edmonton, which provides access to funding and some exceptional data sources that are rarely available to academic researchers. Two journal articles and the book chapter address consumer response to BSE (mad cow disease) in Japan, Canada, and the U.S. Both journal articles will be published in international journals, and the analyses were presented at the 2007 Canadian Agricultural Economics Society meetings and the 2007 Agriculture Institute of Canada meetings.

BSE impacts remain a high priority for food and agriculture agencies, and I received a grant from the International Council for Canadian Studies to perform further analysis of supermarket scanner data regarding impacts of BSE on beef demand. The grant is mainly being used to fund a graduate student who is working on the project. Another pair of journal articles deals with consumer response to conflicting messages about the health benefits of fish consumption versus concerns about mercury and PCB content in some species. This project was awarded a grant from the consumer and market demand network that funded a graduate student, and analysis from the project was presented at the 2007 Food Distribution Research society meetings, as well as the 2007 Agriculture Institute of Canada meetings.

A fifth journal article evaluates the impact of a health and wellness program available to University of Kentucky employees and family members. The manuscript has been in first review at an international journal since May, 2007, and I recently requested a status update. Several students in my undergraduate capstone course and my graduate agricultural marketing course did term projects about consumer response to health issues in 2007, using data obtained for this Hatch project. While the outputs often do not appear as research publications, the overlap between teaching and research objectives is important in developing students' skills, and represents a considerable portion of project-related effort.

Impact

One of the benefits of aligning this research program with membership in the Consumer and Market Demand Network is access to a broad set of government policy makers and private sector decision makers who are actively interested in supporting and using the results from academic research. Research priorities of the Network are largely determined by non-academic stakeholders, and the Network often co-sponsors conferences allowing my research to reach those stakeholders. The most recent example is the 2007 Agriculture Institute of Canada meetings, in which the majority of attendants were from the private sector. Likewise, the grant awarded by the International Council for Canadian Studies is motivated by the sponsor's priority on building stronger linkages between the U.S. and Canada.

Much of my research involves the beef industry, which is one of Kentucky's largest agricultural sectors, one where the U.S./Canada trade linkage is very strong, and one where many health and food consumption issues intersect. The main impacts from the 2007 research on BSE were evidence that a large majority of North American consumers behaved as if BSE were primarily a trade issue. Previously, many retail meat suppliers had assumed that a small number of BSE discoveries would be as devastating to domestic consumer demand as it had been to farm-level demand. Our results, which are specific to North America, allow firms to better target food safety preparedness plans that more effectively safeguard both consumer and supplier welfare.

The 2007 research on conflicting health messages about fish consumption demonstrated that both consumers and food processors respond quickly to clear, unambiguous health messages, while complex health messages produce unintended spillover effects such as reduced consumption of fish not associated with any health or food safety concerns. Government agencies responsible for public communication can use the results to more effectively safeguard consumer health without jeopardizing consumption of health-enhancing foods or industries supplying those foods.

The 2007 research on the effectiveness of a health and wellness program on medical claim costs suggested that awareness-raising programs alone are not sufficient to reduce claim costs in the short-run, but they may encourage employees to undertake more preventive care that produces long-run cost reductions. Employers can use the results to justify devoting resources to comprehensive, activity-based wellness programs, as opposed to limited programs that still require substantial resources but produce far fewer benefits.

Publications

Maynard, L.J., S. Saghaian, and M. Nickoloff. (2008). Buyer and Seller Responses to an Adverse Food Safety Event: The Case of Frozen Salmon in Alberta, International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, 11: (accepted).

Nickoloff, M., L. Maynard, S. Saghaian, and M. Reed. (2008). The Effect of Conflicting Health Information on Frozen Salmon Consumption in Alberta, Canada, Journal of Food Distribution Research, 39,1: (accepted).

Maynard, L.J., E. Goddard, and J. Conley (2008, pending). Impact of BSE on Beef Purchases in Alberta and Ontario Quick-Serve Restaurants, Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics, (pending, in second review).

Maynard, L.J. (2008, pending). Short-term Impact of a Voluntary Health Intervention on Overall vs. Preventive Health Care Consumption, International Journal of Consumer Studies, (pending, in first review).

Saghaian, S., L.J. Maynard, and M.R. Reed. (2007). The Effects of E.COLI 0157:H7, FMD, and BSE on Japanese Retail Beef Prices: A Historical Decomposition, Agribusiness: An International Journal, 23,1: 131:147.

Maynard, L.J., S. Saghaian, and M. Nickoloff. (2007). Buyer and Seller Responses to an Adverse Food Safety Event: The Case of Frozen Salmon in Alberta. (abstract), Making Choices: Consumers and Their Impact on Canada's Agriculture and Food, Agricultural Institute of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, 2007.

Maynard, L.J., Goddard, E., and C. Schram. (2007). BSE and Retail Beef Demand: Comparing Behaviour in Supermarkets vs. Restaurants. (abstract), Making Choices: Consumers and Their Impact on Canada's Agriculture and Food, Agricultural Institute of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, 2007.

Saghaian, S. and L.J. Maynard. (2008). "The Importance of Context in Determining Consumer Response to Food Safety Events: The Case of Mad Cow Disease Discovery in Japan, the United States, and Canada." in Business Management: Leadership, Research, and Marketing. Nova Science Publishers, Inc., Hauppauge, N.Y., in press.

Maynard, L.J., S.H. Saghaian, and M. Nickoloff. (2007). Consumer Reaction to Health Messages About Fish Consumption. Consumer and Market Demand -- Agricultural Research Policy Network working paper CMD 07-05, Edmonton, Alberta. (concurrently published as Staff Paper No. 464, Dept. of Ag. Economics, Univ. of Kentucky)

Maynard, L., J. Conley, and E. Goddard. (2007) Impact of BSE on Beef Purchases in Alberta and Ontario Quick-Serve Restaurants. Staff Paper No. 465, Dept. of Ag. Economics, Univ. of Kentucky.