Alan D. Mathios

Information, Advertising, and Health Choices: A Study of the Cereal Market

This article examines the effects of information on consumer and producer behavior by focusing on the ready-to-eat cereal market during a period in which information developed about the health benefits of fiber cereal consumption. Although cereal producers were initially prohibited from advertising these health benefits, the regulatory ban against producer advertising was lifted during the period we study. Our results indicate that consumers changed their behavior once informed of the health benefits and that advertising was an important source of information once the ban was lifted. Producer health claims about fiber also led to significant product innovation and did not cause adverse effects in other health dimensions of cereal consumption. Government and general information sources had limited impact on fiber cereal choices in the years prior to the advertising. Analysis of individual food consumption data indicates that theories of information acquisition are important in explaining who responds most quickly to new information; household and individual characteristics that reflect costs of acquiring information, ability to process information, and valuation of health are all important determinants of fiber cereal choices. Moreover, the evidence suggests that advertising reduced the differences across consumers by lowering the costs of acquiring information for broad segments of the population. In contrast, the information processing advantages due to education were not reduced by advertising.

The Impact of Mandatory Disclosure Laws on Product Choices: An Analysis of the Salad Dressing Market

The Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (NLEA) requires most food products to include a nutrition label. Prior to the NLEA, labeling was voluntary. This study uses nutrition label information and supermarket scanner data pre‐ and post‐NLEA to examine the impact of moving from a voluntary to a mandatory labeling regime on consumer product choice. The voluntary unraveling of information is shown to be an important market mechanism. Prior to the NLEA, all low‐fat salad dressings had a nutrition label, while the majority of the higher fat dressings did not. However, there remained large variation in fat content among dressings that did not voluntarily label. Those with the highest fat levels experienced a significant decline in sales after they were required to disclose. The results indicate that even in markets with credible, low‐cost mechanisms to disclose, mandatory labeling can have an impact on consumer behavior and health.

Putting Out the Fires: Will Higher Taxes Reduce the Onset of Youth Smoking?

This paper reexamines whether higher cigarette taxes will substantially reduce youth smoking. We study the impact of taxes during exactly the period in adolescence in which most smokers start their habits. We find weak or nonexistent tax effects in models of the onset of smoking between eighth and twelfth grades, models of the onset of heavy smoking between eighth and twelfth grades, and discrete‐time hazard models that include state fixed effects. We also provide a new perspective on the relationship between smoking and schooling: students who eventually drop out of school are already more likely to smoke in the eighth grade.

The Roles of High School Completion and Ged Receipt in Smoking and Obesity

We analyze data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 on high school completion, smoking, and obesity. First, we investigate whether GED recipients differ from other high school graduates in their smoking and obesity behaviors. Second, we explore whether the relationships between schooling and these health‐related behaviors are sensitive to controlling for background and ability measures. Third, we estimate instrumental variables models. Our results suggest that the returns to high school completion may include less smoking but the health returns to GED receipt are much smaller. We find little evidence that high school completion is associated with less obesity.

Electronic Course Evaluations: Does an Online Delivery System Influence Student Evaluations?

Abstract: An increasing number of academic institutions are considering changing to Web-based systems to take advantage of efficiencies in the collection of end-of-semester course evaluaitons. In considering such a change it is important that researchers determine whether it will affect mean evaluaiton scores and response rates. We undertook this study in a department considering changing over to electronic course evaluations ot determine the effect such a change would have on the quality of resulting course evaluation data. Study results found that Web-based evaluation methods led to lower response rates, but that lower response rates did not appear to affect mean evaluation scores. They suggested that faculty evaluation scores will not be adversely affected by switching from paper to Web-based evaluations.

Private Profits and Public Health: Does Advertising of Smoking Cessation Products Encourage Smokers to Quit?

We study the impact of smoking cessation product advertising. To measure potential exposure, we link survey data on magazine‐reading habits and smoking behavior with an archive of print advertisements. We find that smokers who are exposed to more advertising are more likely to attempt to quit and to successfully quit. While some increased quitting involves product purchases, we find that product advertisements also prompt cold turkey quitting. Identifying the causal impact of advertising is difficult because advertisers target consumers. Although reverse causality could bias our estimates upward, our baseline results are not sensitive to a series of checks.

The regulation of science-based claims in advertising

This paper analyzes the effects of scientific information dissemination on consumer and producer behavior. The first section draws heavily from evidence on the ready-to-eat cereal market during a period in which information developed about the health benefits of fiber cereal consumption. Although producers were initially prohibited from advertising these benefits, the regulatory ban against advertising was lifted during the period we study. Our results indicate that advertising was an important source of information leading to increased fiber cereal consumption and product innovation. The second part of our paper discusses the potential for deception if science-based claims are allowed. In the final section we consider a number of regulatory proposals that have been raised in the context of health claims for food products. We evaluate these proposals against the three goals of encouraging the dissemination of truthful information and discouraging the dissemination of deceptive or misleading information and their ability to keep pace with the changing science.ZusammenfassungDer Beitrag untersucht die Auswirkungen der Verbreitung wissenschaftlicher Informationen auf das Verhalten von Konsumenten und Produzenten. Der erste Teil bezieht sich vor allem auf Befunde über den Markt für verzehrfertige Frühstückskost aus einer Zeit, in der Erkenntnisse über die gesundheitlichen Vorteile von ballaststoffhaltiger Frühstückskost gewonnen wurden. Die Hersteller durften anfänglich nicht mit diesen Vorteilen werben, aber dieses Werbeverbot wurde während des Untersuchungszeitraums aufgehoben. Die Untersuchung zieht Daten über aggregierte Marktanteile heran, Daten über den individuellen Verbrauch, Umfrageergebnisse hinsichtlich des Produktwissens, sowie Daten über die Einführung neuer Produkte und gelangt insgesamt zu dem Ergebnis, daß die Werbung zu einer wichtigen Informationsquelle wurde, die zu wachsender Nachfrage nach ballaststoffreicher Frühstückskost und zur Entwicklung neuer Produkte in diesem Bereich führte. Ebenso zeigte sich, daß nicht-werbliche, allgemeine Informationen in der vorhergehenden Zeit solche Auswirkungen in erheblich geringerem Maße hatten. Darüberhinaus ergab sich, daß die Werbung durch ihre größere Reichweite in der Lage war, Unterschiede zwischen verschiedenen Konsumentengruppen im Verbrauch von ballaststoffhaltiger Frühstückskost abzubauen.Der zweite Teil des Beitrage beschäftigt sich mit dem Irreführungspotential der Werbung mit wissenschaftlichen Aussagen und stellt dabei die Unvollständigkeit von Werbeaussagen und Probleme der Unsicherheit und Verständlichkeit in den Vordergrund. Der letzte Teil behandelt eine Reihe von Regulierungsvorschlägen, die im Zusammenhang mit der Verwendung gesundheitsförderlicher Wirkungen von Lebensmitteln gemacht wurden. Er bewertet diese Vorschläge unter dem zweifachen Ziel, daß die Verbreitung richtiger Informationen gefördert und die Verbreitung täuschender und irreführender Information reduziert werden sollte.

Racial Difference in the Determinants of Smoking Onset

The large differences in youth smoking behavior across ethnic and racial groups are often overlooked in debates about prevention. This study examines how the determinants of the onset of smoking vary by race and ethnicity. Academic success is strongly associated with lower smoking rates among white youth, but this is not as true for Hispanics and African-Americans. Cultural assimilation may be an important determinant of smoking for Hispanics. Price increases do not appear to reduce smoking onset among white youth, but the results provide some support that higher prices will reduce smoking among Hispanic and African-American youth.

Education, Variation in Earnings, and Nonmonetary Compensation

The NAS-NRC Twin Offspring data support the proposition that for those with low levels of education, earnings may be an adequate proxy for compensation, whereas the opposite holds for highly educated individuals. The inclusion of variables that control for reasons (monetary or nonmonetary) individuals chose their occupation explains an additional 9 percent of the variation in earnings for those with 16 or more years of education (and lowers the male female wage gap by almost 40 percent) and only an additional 2 percent for those with 15 years or less (no affect on male-female wage gap).

Do the Ends Justify the Means? A Test of Alternatives to the FDA Proposed Cigarette Warning Labels

Three studies provide empirical, social scientific tests of alternatives to the originally proposed U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cigarette package warning labels on health risk beliefs, perceived fear, and effectiveness. Our research addresses questions at the root of the legal disputes surrounding FDA regulation of cigarette package warning labels. Specifically, we describe results from three studies that investigate the mediating role of health beliefs and perceived fear in shaping message effectiveness and intentions to quit. The first study featured nonsmoking young adults, while the second and third studies sampled adult daily smokers. Each study was a randomized experiment with five warning-label image conditions: full-color graphic warning labels, black-and-white graphic warning labels, warning text (no graphic image), Surgeon General’s warning labels, and no warning. Results consistently indicate that graphic warning labels (in both color and black-and-white) promote increased perceptions of fear, which in turn are associated with greater (perceived and actual) effectiveness. We conclude with a discussion of the results, highlighting implications, public policy considerations, and suggestions for future research.