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ABSTRACT
The legality of U.S. country of origin labeling (COOL) laws for agricultural products has been challenged by foreign countries. Isolating the reasons why consumers support COOL can help determine the efficiency of COOL as a policy. Therefore, this study investigated why consumers have a desire for COOL. Data were collected through an online survey with 566 U.S. participants. Results of a bivariate ordered probit model indicate that as consumers are more ethnocentric and more pessimistic about the safety of their food, they are more likely to support COOL for sugar and for sugar in soft drinks. Thus, policies designed to inform the public about the safety of foreign commodities could reduce their desire for COOL. Evidence is also provided that highly ethnocentric individuals support COOL in an effort to “buy American” products.
Contributors
Dr. Karen E. Lewis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of Tennessee. Her research is focused on livestock economics, experimental economics, international agricultural trade, and food policy.
Dr. Carola Grebitus is Assistant Professor of Food Industry Management in the Morrison School of Agribusiness within the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. She focuses on decision making strategies and modeling consumers’ food choice.
Notes
About 29% of the sugar in the United States originates from foreign countries (USDA, Economic Research Service, 2012).
Social desirability bias is the tendency of individuals to deny socially undesirable qualities or traits and instead admit to socially desirable ones (Phillips & Clancy, 1972).
The original CETSCALE study conducted by Shimp and Sharma (1987) sampled 322, 323, 315, and 575 respondents from Detroit, Denver, Los Angeles, and the Carolinas, respectively. They discovered the following CETSCALE scores for the four studied areas: Detroit mean = 68.58; Carolinas mean = 61.28, Denver mean = 57.84, and Los Angeles mean = 56.62.
Sensitivity analysis was also conducted that confirmed robustness of results when including either only the food safety optimism scale or only the food safety pessimism scales in the model. Results of all three models were robust with no changes in significance or direction of coefficients.