| dc.description.abstract | Benefits and consequences of controversial products are debated in the public
arena for the protection of consumers and to evaluate the market decisions made by
industry and government. The food industry continues to develop new foods as well as
processes to bring food to the market. Some of these processes bring to issue the safety
of the products or the impact on the market, workers, or environment. Such controversial
products or processes include BSE (mad cow disease), genetically modified organisms
(GMO), antibiotics, pesticides, carbon monoxide modified atmosphere packaging, and
food irradiation.
This thesis sets out with the objective of understanding, developing, and utilizing
methodologies similar to those used in other contingent valuation studies to evaluate
how consumers are influenced by varying information using food irradiation as a focus
subject. Food irradiation is a technological food process that continues to be debated and
much information favoring and opposing it is readily available to the public, making it a
suitable subject about which to study information effects and consumer acceptance.
To accomplish this objective, consumers were surveyed in grocery stores in the
state of Texas during the spring of 2006. As irradiated foods are not currently widely available, a hypothetical product, irradiated mangoes, was used to elicit information
from survey participants. The survey was comprised of two parts. First general
information regarding consumer knowledge and trust of food irradiation as well as
willingness to pay (WTP) was collected. Second, varying information regarding food
irradiation (positive, negative, or mixed) was presented and questioning was
reaccomplished.
Evaluation of the survey data was made in three papers, each comprising its own
chapter in this thesis. The first paper evaluates consumers’ initial trust and knowledge of
food irradiation and how these factors interact with information in changing WTP. The
second paper assesses responses for a “cheap talk” effect. Cheap talk is informing
consumers of the existence of hypothetical bias in studies of this type with the goal being
to reduce this bias to real life response equivalence. The third paper evaluates not only
WTP, but also how consumer trust is affected by varying forms of information. | en |
