The Effects Of Avian Influenza News On Consumer Purchasing Behavior
To better understand how information about potential health hazards influences food demand, this case study examines consumers’ responses to newspaper articles on avian influenza, informally referred to as bird flu… Estimated poultry demand, as influenced by the volume of newspaper reports on bird flu, reveals the magnitude and duration of newspaper articles’ impacts on consumers’ food choices. Larger numbers of bird flu news reports led to larger reductions in poultry purchases. Most impacts were of limited duration, and all began to diminish within 5 weeks.
Study Findings [Excerpted from report]:
Over the sample period August 2004 through October 2006, European newspapers averaged 324.4 bird flu articles per week that did not mention Italy and 24.7 that did. The number of European newspaper articles on bird flu surged to 2,455 articles in the week ending October 23, 2005, following reports that the virus had been found in Turkey, Romania, and Croatia. Additional spikes followed in January through April 2006 as HPAI H5N1 was identified in Turkey, Romania, and Croatia, and later in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Switzerland. The weekly number of newspaper articles on bird flu that mentioned Italy was relatively flat but spiked in the week ending February 19, 2006, with the discovery of the H5N1 subtype of HPAI in dead wild swans in southern Italy.
During the same period, newspaper articles on bird flu had a statistically significant effect on sales of poultry products in Italy, both fresh and frozen. At the margin, each additional newspaper article reduced purchases, and did so over time. Results include the following:
- For fresh poultry, historical sales were, on average, 79.8 percent of what they would have been if there had been no news about bird flu.
- Non-Italy-specific news about bird flu reduced fresh poultry sales by an average of 13.5 percent, and Italy-specific news was responsible for a further 6.7-percent drop.
- Non-Italy-specific news and Italy-specific news reduced purchases of frozen and processed poultry by 4.1 percent and 14.6 percent, respectively.
On average, each additional newspaper report about bird flu reduced consumption, but the reductions were not permanent and eventually diminished. For fresh poultry consumption, the largest decline occurred in the second week after the newspaper report was published. For frozen and processed poultry sales, the response to news that was not Italy-specific was largest in the same week the news was reported and declined to about a third of the initial response in the second week. By the fifth week, the response had become negligible. The response to Italy-specific news increased, fell, and increased again before diminishing.