A substantial proportion of foodborne illnesses arise at home as a result of poor food handling practices. Consumer information intervention has usually been conducted to prevent such illness; however, few studies have examined the spillover effect of these interventions. This study aimed to identify whether an information intervention focused on one target food handling behavior has spillover effects on other aspects of food handling behaviors (nontargeting behaviors) through a randomized controlled trial (RCT) conducted in rural China. The results estimated by the difference-in-difference model reveal that information intervention has a significant impact on both target and nontarget food handling behaviors. The existence of positive spillover effects is mainly due to the release of limited attention resources from information interventions and the motivation of consumers to maintain other aspects of behaviors as regulated as the target behaviors. In addition, the results also show that being surveyed spurs a stimulus to subsequent behavior. The survey effect is taken into account when calculating the spillover effects in this paper, so a more accurate estimate is obtained. These findings can motivate governments to conduct more consumer education campaigns, especially in emerging countries, and can also contribute to experimental design, data collection methods and cost‒benefit analyses of interventions, thereby helping researchers avoid biased parameter estimation.

Price transmission has been studied extensively in agricultural economics through the lens of spatial and vertical price relationships. Classical time series econometric techniques suffer from the "curse of dimensionality" and are applied almost exclusively to small sets of price series, either prices of one commodity in a few regions or prices of a few commodities in one region. However, an agrifood supply chain usually contains several commodities (e.g., cattle and beef) and spans numerous regions. Failing to jointly examine multi-region, multi-commodity price relationships limits researchers' ability to derive insights from increasingly high-dimensional price datasets of agrifood supply chains. We apply a machine-learning method - specifically, regularized regression - to augment the classical vector error correction model (VECM) and study large spatial-plus-vertical price systems. Leveraging weekly provincial-level data on the piglet-hog-pork supply chain in China, we uncover economically interesting changes in price relationships in the system before and after the outbreak of a major hog disease. To quantify price transmission in the large system, we rely on the spatial-plus-vertical price relationships identified by the regularized VECM to visualize comprehensive spatial and vertical price transmission of hypothetical shocks through joint impulse response functions. Price transmission shows considerable heterogeneity across regions and commodities as the VECM outcomes imply and display different dynamics over time.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the stigmatization of certain regions, products, and individuals, leading to psychological and financial consequences for those affected. Employing both hypothetical and non-hypothetical Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) incentive-compatible experiments, we examine participants' willingness to pay (WTP) for oranges, toilet paper, and dry noodles under different conditions to assess the level of COVID-19 stigma. The results indicate that participants' WTP is indeed reduced when they know that the product is likely to be produced by workers who have recovered from COVID-19. Nevertheless, individuals who have experienced discrimination or possess higher social status tend to increase consumers' WTP, alleviating the stigma associated with COVID-19. The availability of vaccines and the dissemination of information help alleviate the COVID-19 stigma. Governments and the scientific community should enhance health communication efforts to alleviate public concerns regarding COVID-19. Furthermore, the results show that consumers had ambivalent attitudes of both sympathy and rejection toward fresh foods associated with COVID-19. This study offers empirical evidence of the difference between purchasing behavior and stated willingness, with implications for mitigating stigmatization.

The adoption of clean fuels has been associated with improvements in health and women's empowerment. However, the effects on women's labor market participation and family nutrition remain under-investigated. This study examines the impact of adopting clean fuels on rural women's labor market participation and family nutritional status using representative survey data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey. Our findings indicate that households' use of clean fuels can promote female employment through two pathways as follows: improving health and reducing cooking time, which leads to an increase in their weekly labor supply by 0.9 days and daily working hours by nearly 1 h. Moreover, this gender-specific improvement in employment can more effectively enhance women's role in promoting household nutrition, as indicated by more diverse dietary patterns and higher protein intake. This study highlights a novel perspective that integrates domestic energy transition into broader sustainable development goals, particularly those related to health, nutrition, and gender equality.

Foodborne disease cases are increasingly occurring in home kitchens because of improper food handling behavior. Human factors are considered major determinants of such behavior, although economic factors, which have attracted little attention, may also be important influencers. Taking the service time of kitchen towels as an example, we construct a theoretical model to analyze food handling behavior under an economic framework and empirically explore its economic determinants. Empirically, we use a randomized controlled trial (RCT) coupled with pre- and postsurveys in rural China. The RCT intervention includes information with tips for proper kitchen towel use and in-kind subsidies of one, two, or three packs of kitchen towels, which is regarded as a price intervention. We find that information alone and information plus one pack of towels are not enough to stimulate behavior improvement, whereas information plus two or three packs is sufficient. This implies that the quantity of kitchen towels used increases only as the towel price drops below a certain threshold. As an early attempt, we indicate that food handling behavior is economically driven, suggesting that a well-designed policy should combine educational campaigns and appropriate economic incentives to improve such behavior to reduce the risk of foodborne disease.

To address student concerns about full tuition rates while taking online courses during COVID-19, we conducted choice experiments at a representative U.S. land-grant university to elicit students' willingness-to-pay for alternative course delivery modes. Results show that students demanded 30% and 7% tuition discounts for fully online and hybrid learning, respectively. A welfare analysis further reveals that 63% of the total welfare loss during Fall 2020-Spring 2022 was compensated for by the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) funding. Based on our findings, we suggest measures to facilitate students' learning experiences and emphasize the importance of leveraging government appropriations.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic is no longer a life-threatening pandemic, it has left behind economic challenges worldwide. During the outbreak, many governments mandated the use of face masks in public areas, resulting in its demand and market price immediately skyrocketing. The government may intervene in markets through price, which may lead to market misallocation. This article aims to investigate how consumers form their beliefs about face mask price changes based on their estimations of the market demand and supply, both with and without government intervention, and assess their willingness-to-pay (WTP) for face masks during the pandemic. The data was collected through an online survey of Chinese consumers in 2020. The results provide valuable insights for policymakers to better understand consumers' price expectations and WTP for face masks, enabling more effective government interventions to maintain market stability while ensuring consumer access to face masks.

PurposeThis study aims to test the compensatory consumption theory with the explicit hypothesis that China's new-rich tend to waste relatively more food.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, the authors use Heckman two-step probit model to empirically investigate the new-rich consumption behavior related to food waste.FindingsThe results show that new-rich is associated with restaurant leftovers and less likely to take them home, which supports the compensatory consumption hypothesis.Practical implicationsUnderstanding the empirical evidence supporting compensatory consumption theory may improve forecasts, which feed into early warning systems for food insecurity. And it also avoids unreasonable food policies.Originality/valueThis research is a first attempt to place food waste in a compensatory-consumption perspective, which sheds light on a new theory for explaining increasing food waste in developing countries.

Facing increasing nonrenewable and environmental concerns with fossil power generation, renewable energy is being supported by government mechanisms. With the power generation cost of renewables generally higher than fossil fuels, determining the optimal level of these mechanisms requires an understanding of households’ prosocial behavior toward renewables. The issue is determining the magnitude households are willing to pay (WTP) for alternative renewables. Our hypothesis is this behavior varies by the type of renewable energy. As a test of this hypothesis, we apply a discrete choice experiment to measure households’ WTP. Results support our hypothesis with a positive WTP for solar energy, leading to a 62% reduction in solar subsidy, and a negative WTP for biomass and wind sources.

This research tested the hypothesis that post-disaster federal relief program crowds out the demand for flood insurance in the U.S. To do that, this research has collected historical data between 2016 and 2020, and conducted propensity score-based analysis to understand the causality between post-disaster federal assistance and flood insurance enrollment in the flood affected counties in the U.S. In the first part, the treatment variable has been considered as binary to compare the effect of the availability of federal assistance to that of non-availability of federal assistance in a flood affected county by using propensity score matching method. It was found that the availability of the federal payout in a county in a year increased the number of flood insurance policies by 5.2 % and the total insured value of the policies by 4.6 % in the following year. Next, the treatment variable was considered continuous and was used in a generalized propensity score method to develop a dose response function, i.e., a function that depicts the changes in the outcome variables based on different levels of treatment. It was found that for each 1000 households in a county that received federal assistance, the percentage increase in the number of flood insurance policies was 3.41 %. On the other hand, for each million-dollar of federal assistance in a county, the total insured value of the flood insurance policies increased by 1.96 %. Therefore, this research has concluded that, contrary to the hypothesis, the availability of post-disaster federal assistance increased the flood insurance enrollment in the U.S.

Spatial market integration, an important means to increase market efficiency and boost economic development, is often affected by policy changes such as trade liberalization and trade restrictions. With unique weekly data on provincial hog prices, we use the 2018 outbreak of African Swine Fever (ASF) in China and the subsequent ban on cross-province shipment of hogs as a natural experiment to study dynamic spatial mechanisms underlying market integration. We employ a high-dimensional spatial model to estimate pairwise inter-province price links over several periods around the ASF outbreak for 29 Chinese provinces. Regressions reveal that a greater inter-province distance weakens the spatial price links post-ban, but not before the ban, which indicates insufficient arbitrage under imperfect public information regarding ASF. The temporary market segmentation implies substantial dead-weight-loss. Our findings highlight the role of public information on risks in maintaining market integration and efficiency under supply-side disruptions.

As concerns over African swine fever (ASF) in China continue, measures have been taken to regulate the inter-provincial transport of live hogs, yet entrenched non-chilled fresh pork consumption habits make it challenging to expand the chilled pork in the market. To address this issue, our study employed multiple rounds of random Nth-price auction experiments to measure participants' quality perceptions of, and willingness to pay (WTP) for chilled pork under different packaging, storage temperature and duration labels. By comparing the results with physicochemical lab testing outcomes, we confirmed the existence of a quality perception bias among the participants. Notably, consumers who regularly consume chilled meat demonstrated a higher average WTP, while consumers born in the 1980s exhibited significantly higher bids. Furthermore, access to emerging purchase channels positively influences consumer WTP for chilled meat, particularly through branded product purchasing experiences. Consequently, it is recommended that the public sector takes steps to balance the distribution of pork production capacity and supports the development of cold chain transportation technology to meet the growing demand for high-quality chilled pork, especially from younger consumers.

Economists found that post-disaster assistance programs often reduce the demand for flood insurance. This crowding-out effect, also called "charity hazard," is relatively underexplored in the US. To bridge that gap, this paper presents a causal model that analyzes the impact of post-disaster federal payouts on flood insurance enrollment using historical data from 1,158 US counties between 2016 and 2020 with positive flood damage where a major flood-related disaster had been declared. To develop the causal model, this paper utilizes the propensity score matching method to assess the impact of receiving federal payout in a county in a year on the percentage change in the number of flood insurance policies and the total insured value of the flood insurance policies in the subsequent year. It was found that the availability of the federal payout in a county in a year increased the number of flood insurance policies by 5.2% and the total insured value of those policies by 4.6% in the following year.

Microplastics are polluting the oceans worldwide and being stored in popular seafood species. Although there is uncertainty about human health impacts from consuming such seafood, such uncertainty doesn't limit consumer concern. Economic studies regarding these new pollutants are seriously lacking, although environmental research is becoming more common. One of the goals of this study is to fill this gap, and meanwhile we explore that culture, attitudinal factors, and willingness-to-pay (WTP) elicitation formats may be key determinants in consumer actions. Surveys were conducted in three countries that vary in their seafood consumption habits, environmental attitudes, and culture. The results show that while previous knowledge of microplastics differs widely, when presented with microplastic information, about 90% of the respondents in all countries viewed microplastics as harmful. Mean own WTP for microplastic safer salmon was 162%, 222%, and 150% above the usual price of salmon in the US, China, and Korea, respectively. While there exists significant differences in WTP across examined nations, commonalities exist. Namely, individuals with a peer-like-oneself outlook and collectivistic values displayed significantly higher WTP for microplastic safer salmon. Promoting an equal view of peers and emphasizing the group can lead to higher WTP for less microplastic contaminated food. Policies in educating the public for these new pollutants, supporting the seafood industry to help clean up waters near the seashore, and partnering with consumers in funding the pro-environmental behavior are called for.

We investigate consumers' willingness to pay premiums for environmentally sustainably produced meat and plant-based meat substitutes. We conducted a randomized control study coupled with an incentive-compatible experimental auction. Treatment consisted of information nudges concerning the environmental and health externalities of meat production and consumption. Results show that demand for sustainably produced beef and a plant-based meat substitute is inelastic. We elicited participants' time preferences to analyze whether consumer behavior varies with their time preference. Present-biased treated female participants were willing to pay a significantly lower premium for sustainably produced beef compared to the present-biased control female participants. Future-biased treated participants had a higher probability of being willing to pay a premium for a plant-based meat substitute compared to the control group. We discuss the policy implications and relevance of information nudging, such as labeling, and how the effect of such nudging varies with participant characteristics.

In an emerging economy like China where the domestic income inequality has dramatically increased between middle-class urban consumers and poor rural farmers, food grown by poor farmers with poverty alleviation labels may receive price premiums from consumers with multiple incentives. To reveal consumers' willingness-to-pay (WTP) for anti-poverty labelled food, we implement a non-hypothetical Becker-DeGroot-Marschak auction online experiment for apples with real shoppers. Results show that consumers are willing to pay 3.66 RMB extra for each kilogram of apples with anti-poverty labels, indicating the opportunities for using voluntary public food consumption to supplement the government's anti-poverty responsibilities. Consumers who are more empathic, who believe that anti-poverty products have higher quality, who have donated money within the past year, and who are not involve with anti-poverty related production or selling processes are willing to pay more. Additionally, three different information treatments (a beneficiary description, an appreciation certificate and a government promotion document) were found to increase consumers' WTP for anti-poverty products. Treatment effects are different among consumers with different demographic characters and perspectives about the anti-poverty label. Lastly, anti-poverty labels can attract consumers for trial purchase but are not sufficient to lead consumers to make repeat purchases.

The illegal use of gutter oil (GO) as cooking oil is a serious food fraud problem in China and has raised widespread concerns. With the popular use of internet, Koubei, a food ordering app, launched a campaign that every restaurant could pledge on the platform that it is GO free. This paper evaluates whether consumers value the GO-free feature reflected on their willingness-to-pay (WTP) to the claim. Results show the GO-free claim receives a positive WTP, and consumers are even more sensitive to the GO-free pledged by small businesses and independent restaurants. For policy implications, results confirm the advantages that the online platforms have in providing food safety information and alleviating the market failure caused by asymmetric information. It will complement the governments’ efforts in preventing GO use and other fraud behaviors in food markets.