Impact of nutrition information on consumers' food purchases.

Abstract

This study estimates the impact of nutrition information provided by popular media on consumers' food purchases in U.S. grocery stores, taking omega-3 fortified eggs as an example. Household-level scanner data are analyzed with the media index for the information about health benefits of omega-3 fatty acids, which is constructed from multiple information sources by utilizing computer-coded content analysis. In addition, the welfare change of consumers is measured by the consumer surplus and the value of information is also estimated. The results show a significant positive impact of nutritional information from popular media on consumers' food choices. Consumers are quite sensitive to the prices of regular eggs, but are not very sensitive to a change in the price of omega-3 eggs. Consumer surplus increased over time. When this welfare change is investigated further using the concept of the value of information, most of the welfare change is accounted for by the information. In this way, publishing in popular media can be an effective information communication approach to promote consumers' health.