Research Accomplishment Reports 2008

Consumer Choice Regarding Food and Health

L.J. Maynard
Department of Agricultural Economics

 

Non-Technical Summary

The costs to society of obesity and other negative health outcomes linked to food consumption are enormous and largely preventable. Obesity correlates more highly with chronic illness than does poverty, smoking, and heavy drinking. Kentucky is one of the highest-ranked states in percentage of overweight and obese adults, and childhood obesity is of special concern. The purpose of this research program is to conduct empirical studies of the importance of health in consumers' food choices, and to evaluate the effectiveness of food-related programs aimed at improving health.

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 2008, three refereed journal articles, one book, one book chapter, and one conference proceedings article relevant to this program were published. Two additional journal artices are in the revise-and-resubmit or second submission stages, and will be listed in the publications section in the year they are published. Three program-related presentations were given at professional conferences, a grant was awarded, one graduate student was employed on program-related projects, and another student's travel expenses to a conference were paid from program-related funds.

Much 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. One journal article and the book chapter address consumer response to BSE (mad cow disease) in Japan, Canada, and the U.S. 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 was mainly used to fund a graduate student who is working on the project, as well as travel expenses for graduate students to attend professional conferences. Another journal article dealt with consumer response to conflicting messages about the health benefits of fish consumption versus concerns about mercury and PCB content in some species. During 2008, I was interviewed about this research by Food for Thought magazine in Canada, and by the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture magazine. A third journal article evaluated the impact of a health and wellness program available to University of Kentucky employees and family members. All three articles were published in international journals.

Several students in my undergraduate capstone course and my graduate agricultural marketing course did term projects about consumer response to health issues in 2008, 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. 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 research on BSE were evidence that a large majority of North American consumers behaved as if BSE were primarily a trade issue, although consumer concern grew upon repeated BSE discoveries. 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 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 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, 77-96.

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, 97-102.

Veeramani, V. and L.J. Maynard. (2008). Price Points and Thresholds in Retail Demand: Testing Methods and Procedures. Saarbrucken: VDM Verlag Dr. Muller Aktiengesellschaft & Co.