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When Consumers Don't Want to Know

Since I first started working on the topic of animal welfare, I've had the sense that some (perhaps many?) consumers don't want to know how farm animals are raised.  While that observation probably rings intuitively true for many readers, for an economist it sounds strange.  Whether we're talking about GMO labeling, nutritional labels, country of origin labels on meat, or labels on cage free eggs, economists typically assume more information can't make a person worse off.  Either the consumer uses the information to make a better choice or they ignore it all together.    

There is a stream of literature in economics and psychology that is beginning challenge the idea that "more information is better."  One simple explanation for the phenomenon could be that consumers, if they know for sure they will continue to consume the same amount of a good, could be better off ignoring information because the information could only lower their satisfaction (perhaps because they'll feel guilty) for doing something they've already committed to doing.  In this paper by Linda Thunstrom and co-authors, 58% of consumers making a meal choice chose to ignore free information on caloric content, a finding that Thunstrom calls "strategic self ignorance" arising from guilt avoidance. 

Another possible explanation that I've previously published on is that, when people have limited attention, more information on topic A might distract people from a topic B, even though topic B ultimately has a larger impact on the consumers well-being.  

It may also be the case that people want to believe certain things.  They derive satisfaction from holding onto certain beliefs and will avoid information that challenges them.  These ideas and more are discussed by Russell Golman, David Hagmann and George Loewenstein in a nice review paper on what they call "information avoidance" for the Journal of Economic Literature.

A graduate student in our department, Eryn Bell, has been working with Bailey Norwood to apply some of these concepts to the topic of animal welfare.  They conducted a survey of 1,000 Oklahomans and asked them one of the two simple questions shown below.  Depending on how the question was asked, from 24% to 44% of respondents self declared that they would rather NOT know how hogs are raised.  The primary reasons given for this response were that farmers were trusted (a belief consumers may prefer to hold), that there are more important issues to worry about (limited attention), and guilt aversion. 

In the same survey, Bell and Norwood also included a set of questions based on some ideas I suggested.  The question gave respondents the option to see a picture of how sows are raised or to simply see a blank screen for a certain period of time.  People were divided into three groups that varied how long they had to see the blank screen.  The idea was that we could use the waiting time as a "cost", which would allow us to ask: how long are people willing to wait to NOT receive free information?  As it turns out, people weren't very sensitive to the waiting time.  Nonetheless, regardless of the waiting time, about a third of respondents preferred to see an uninformative blank screen as opposed to a more informative screenshot of sow housing.  These findings suggest at least some people, at least some of the time, would prefer not to know.  

Does a Good Diet Guarantee Good Health?

To be sure, dietary factors contribute to bad health at least some of the time for some people.  But, how large a role does diet play?  Stated differently: even if you eat well all the time, are you guaranteed to be free of cancer, heart disease, and diabetes?  Far from it according to two recent studies.  

The first was published Friday in Science by Tomasetti, Li, and Vogelstein, who investigated cancer causes.  When discussing the things that can cause cancer, causes normally fall into one of two broad categories: nature (environmental factors) or nurture (inherited genetic factors).  These authors, however, point to a third factor: as we grow, our cells naturally replicate themselves, and in the process, unavoidable DNA replication errors occur which ultimately lead to cancer.  The authors calculate that these replication errors or  

“mutations are responsible for two-thirds of the mutations in human cancers.”

Secondly, I ran across this interesting paper published a couple weeks ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association.  The authors attempted to ferret out how many deaths from heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes (what the authors call "cardiometabolic deaths") that result each year annually come about from over- or under-consumption of certain types of foods.  As this critic pointed out, it is important to note that the authors estimates are associations/correlations NOT causation.  As such, I'd suggest caution in placing too much interpretation on the impacts from different types of food.  Nonetheless, there were a couple of other less-well-publicized results which I found interesting.

First, the authors found:

“In 2012, suboptimal intake of dietary factors was associated with an estimated 318 656 cardiometabolic deaths, representing 45.4% of cardiometabolic deaths.”

Stated differently, 54.6% of deaths from heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes seems to be caused by something other than diet.   

The other result that I found interesting from this study is that there has been a big decline in so-called cardiometabolic deaths.  The authors write:

“Between 2002 and 2012, population-adjusted US cardiometabolic deaths per year decreased by 26.5%.”

Some of this decline, they argue, is due to reduced sugar consumption and increased nut/seed consumption from 2002 to 2012.

Why does all this matter?  Because these statistics help us understand the impacts of dietary and lifestyle changes.  To illustrate, let's take the above cancer statistic: 66.7% of cancers are caused by unavoidable replication errors. That leaves 33.3% of cancers, some of which are diet and lifestyle related and some of which are caused by inherited genetic factors.  For sake of simplicity, lets say you have zero risk from inherited genetic factors. Also note that the National Cancer Institute suggests that the chances of getting a new cancer in a given year are 454.8 per 100,000 people (or a 0.45% chance).  

Putting it all together, your chance of getting cancer from random errors in DNA replication is 0.667*0.45%=0.30%, and your chance of getting cancer from diet and lifestyle factors (assuming no inherited risks) is 0.333*0.45%=0.15%.  So, even if you could completely eliminate the cancer risk from diet and lifestyle factors, you'd go from a 0.45% chance of getting a new cancer to a 0.30% chance, a reduction of 0.15 percentage points.

The Problem of Food Waste Over-stated?

Marc Bellemare and colleagues at the University of Minnesota have an important new paper out on food waste.

First, they note that there are important weaknesses and inconsistencies in the leading definitions of food waste published by the United Nations, the USDA, and the European Union.  Second, they provide compelling conceptual reasons to suggest that reported measures of food waste are almost certainly overstated.  Finally, they propose a conceptual logically-consistent approach to measure food waste.  

The arguments for why the value of food waste is overstated boil down to two factors: 1) some "waste" has productive uses as animal feed, compost, etc. and 2) the value of wasted food is often "priced" at the retail level, when in fact the actual waste occurs further upstream the supply chain where commodity prices are lower.  

You can read the whole paper here.

Purdue

I am pleased to announce that I have officially accepted an offer to be the next Head of the Department of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University (I will also be nominated for the post of Distinguished Professor at Purdue) and will begin there after the first of July.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my 12 years at Oklahoma State and appreciate the support and opportunities OSU has afforded me. I've had great students and colleagues, and have made wonderful friends in Stillwater.  But, now’s the time to move on to a new challenge.  

The college of agriculture at Purdue is routinely ranked in the top 5 to 10 worldwide, and the Department of Agricultural Economics has a long history of excellence and leadership in the profession.  It's a large department with about 50 faculty members, almost 150 graduate students, and 600 undergraduates.  It's a big job and I'm looking forward to it.  

What kind of farmer are you?

A couple days ago, I reported the results from the Food Demand Survey (FooDS) for March 2017. In addition to a typical question we ask every month "Have you ever worked on a farm or ranch?", we added a new follow up question, "Which of the following best describes the kind of farm you worked on? (Check all that apply)."

As I reported then, about 17% of people said yes to the first question.  Of this 17%, about 38% followed it up by saying the type of farm was a "garden in your backyard", 23% said "A chicken coop in your backyard" and 12% said "a community garden".  I received some Twitter questions and reaction to the results.  

Here's one vein of reaction:

Of course, this is exactly what we wanted to know: who are the people checking "yes" to this question and what do they (not us) consider farm or ranch work? 

A more substantive question was this one:

The answer is "yes".  This was a "check all that apply" question and a lot of commodity crop and livestock farms also have backyard gardens and chickens.  To get at this issue more directly, I went back to the data and looked at the 17% who said "yes" they had worked on a farm and ranch and looked at the percent of respondents who said they had a backyard garden (or chicken coop or community garden) but did NOT check “A farm that produces commodity crops (e.g. corn, wheat, soybeans, cotton, or rice)” or “A farm that produces commercial livestock (e.g. cattle, swine, or poultry).” 

Here are the results: of the 17% who said they'd worked on a farm or ranch: 4.7% indicated working in a community garden but NOT a commodity crop or livestock operation, 12.2% indicated they worked in a garden in their backyard but NOT in commodity crop or livestock operation, and 7.5% said they had a chicken coop in their backyard but had NOT worked in a commodity crop or livestock operation.