Elsevier

Food Quality and Preference

Volume 64, March 2018, Pages 56-65
Food Quality and Preference

Does safety information influence consumers’ preferences for controversial food products?

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2017.10.013Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Unpasteurized cheese consumers are aware of yet undeterred by safety debate.

  • Preferences for unpasteurized cheese are driven by food safety attitudes and taste.

  • Consumers exhibit confirmation bias when exposed to information on pasteurization.

Abstract

This paper uses experimental auctions to address two key research questions: are preferences for controversial food products a function of safety information, or personal attitudes and preferences? To what extent are consumers’ preferences for a controversial food product influenced by positive and negative scientific information? Experimental auctions for pasteurized and unpasteurized artisan cheese were conducted on computer tablets with participants at farmers’ markets in Michigan, New York and Vermont using a Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) auction mechanism. Along with the auctions, participants blindly evaluated the sensory characteristics of the cheeses and answered demographic questions and Likert scale questions about their attitudes towards food safety. We find that ideology, taste, and principle drive consumers’ preferences for unpasteurized cheese, as opposed to misinformation or ignorance. There is also evidence that artisan cheese consumers exhibit confirmation bias when exposed to information about pasteurization.

Introduction

Consumers can be subjective in how they assess food safety risk. A consumer’s assessment is a function of the information they have about the product or production technology as well as their attitude about food safety (Lobb, Mazzocchi, & Traill, 2007). Moreover, their attitude about food safety can influence how they respond to new information about a controversial food product or technology. From a policy perspective, the easiest way to ensure the safety of a food product and minimize risk to consumers is through government regulation of production practices. However, defining an optimal balance between food safety and consumer choice can be challenging for policymakers due to the heterogeneity in consumer attitudes about food safety and the heterogeneity in their preferences concerning the extent to which food safety should be pursued at the expense of other aspects of quality, such as taste.

There is an ongoing debate about the acceptability of risk in the food system (Nestle, 2010). The proliferation of small-scale “artisan” food producers has highlighted this debate and presents new concerns for policymakers. Artisan food products are often handmade, minimally processed, and highly diversified products in which the uniqueness of the product is of paramount importance to its demand. The uniqueness of these products however is the antithesis of standardization, which in the broader industrial scale food system has become the basis for ensuring the safety of food products. The emphasis on standardization to promote food safety presents challenges when it comes to regulating artisan products. In some cases, standardization of processes can improve food safety outcomes, although the standardization often comes at the expense of other aspects of quality including sensory characteristics, diversity of consumer choice, and health benefits. In many cases, there are divided opinions among both the public and scientists about the food safety outcomes of particular processes, such as the genetic modification of food (Funk and Rainie, 2015, European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility, 2014). The debate over the safety of unpasteurized or raw milk and more specifically the safety of cheese made from raw milk is another example where there are divisions among the public and the scientific community.

Previous consumer acceptance studies of controversial food technologies have tended to focus on mainstream products and markets (e.g. Nayga et al., 2006, Rousu et al., 2002), thus omitting a unique subset of the changing food system. Artisan foods such as beer and cheese among many others are an increasingly important segment of the food market. Craft beer sales in the US capture 21% of the total beer market, 12% by volume, and expect to have a 50% market share in a decade (Shorto, 2016). Artisan cheese consumption is on the rise and the number of artisan cheesemakers in the US doubled between 2000 and 2007 to more than 400, with 75% of them using unpasteurized milk for at least some of their products (Roberts, 2007). Understanding the attitudes of artisan food consumers towards risk, their preferences, and their behavior is critical for designing policies that reflect consumers’ demand for food safety. With artisan products becoming part of the broader food safety discussion they have placed policymakers in a challenging position with respect to the laws that govern food safety.

In this paper we examine how provision of information about the debate over pasteurization influences preferences for pasteurized and unpasteurized cheese. On one hand, pasteurization of milk has led to significant improvements in the safety of milk and milk products in the last century and is thus an obvious safety-enhancing procedure. On the other hand, pasteurization of milk used to produce cheese kills beneficial bacteria, which are the foundation of flavor development (Bachmann et al., 1998) and can improve safety by competing with harmful bacteria that may have been introduced post processing (Johnson et al., 1990). Pasteurization thus represents a tradeoff between safety and (sensory) quality for some consumers, particularly with artisan cheese, and this is what we explore in light of the positive and negative scientific information about pasteurization. By positive information we mean information in support of a particular practice, and by negative information we mean information in opposition to a given practice. We look at the effect of pro-pasteurization and pro-raw milk (unpasteurized milk) information on consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for pasteurized cheese. We are particularly interested in whether consumers place greater weight on negative information as other researchers have found with other products (Fox et al., 2002, Rousu et al., 2007).

Section snippets

Background

The practice of pasteurizing milk used in the production of cheese in the United States dates back to World War II when the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) encouraged producers to pasteurize the milk used to produce the millions of pounds of cheese being supplied to US and allied troops abroad (Johnson et al., 1990). Following two outbreaks of typhoid fever in 1944, the Surgeon General declared that cheese must be made from pasteurized milk or be aged before sale to allow the

Experimental auctions

The research reported here builds on the research presented in Waldman and Kerr (2015) regarding consumers’ preferences between pasteurized and unpasteurized cheese and the associated tradeoff between food quality and safety. This paper relies on the same underlying experimental auction data in addition to a second round of observations following an information treatment. In this paper we examine the effect of providing consumers with information about the safety of pasteurization of milk used

Results

We first describe the summary statistics of the sample and auction results prior to the information treatments and then auction outcomes following the information treatments. Table 3 displays the characteristics of the sample of artisan cheese consumers who participated in the experiments. The sample was mostly male and better educated but with similar income compared to the overall American population. A quarter of participants had children.

Participants consume about one pound of cheese per

Discussion

Our findings differ from those of Colonna, Durham, and Meunier-Goddik (2011), who conducted sensory tests with pasteurized and unpasteurized pairs of numerous cheeses and found that on average more people preferred cheese made from unpasteurized milk (in blind taste tests and particularly when they were labeled). In contrast to Colonna et al. (2011), the experimental design employed here used only one type of cheese and the goal was not to isolate the differences in consumers’ sensory

Conclusions

Evidence suggests that the debate about the safety of unpasteurized milk products and how to regulate the safety of small scale artisan food products more broadly is not about consumer ignorance but rather about the acceptability of risk in the food system. Consumers’ preferences are driven by preconceived notions or attitudes about food safety as well as taste preferences so perspectives about the debate over a food safety issue such as the safety of unpasteurized cheese are seemingly

Acknowledgements

Funding for this research was provided by a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (Award Number 1156269) and a United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture Pre-Doctoral Fellowship (Award Number MICL08470).

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