Valuing food safety improvements using willingness to pay.
Food safety policies are coming under increasing scrutiny. A challenging issue when devising food policies is to assess the 'intangible' benefits such as a reduction in suffering from food-related illness. Here, contingent valuation is used to elicit individuals' willingness to pay (WTP) for the elimination of the risk of poultry-borne illness through irradiation and a hypothetical treatment. Two hundred members of the general public were interviewed and the results show that people are willing to pay extra for food safety. WTP is found to be sensitive to the elicitation format.
van der Pol
Marjon
M
Health Economics Research Unit, University of Aberdeen, Scotland. mvdpol@ucalgary.ca
Ryan
Mandy
M
Donaldson
Cam
C
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001294:Attitude to Health; D005260:Female; D005382:Financing, Personal; D005506:Food Contamination / Q000191:economics / Q000517:prevention & control*; D005514:Food Irradiation; D005517:Foodborne Diseases / Q000191:economics / Q000517:prevention & control*; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011050:Policy Making; D012449:Safety / Q000191:economics*; D006113:United Kingdom