Description: Job Market Talk: Jiwon Lee

Location: 368A Heady Hall

Title: "How can news articles on foreign animal diseases affect meat purchases? The case of African swine fever"

Abstract: Misleading headlines that draw attention to the deadly aspects of animal disease can cause fear in consumers. This can be especially true when a disease is rarely known to the public, which is often the case with foreign animal diseases characterized by uncertainty and complexity. African swine fever (ASF) is a contagious viral disease that impacts pigs only. It is not a public health threat or food safety concern. It is critical to appreciate that many animal diseases have no impact on human health; however, this fails to guarantee no adverse meat demand impacts. To examine whether framing and curation of information in news articles can bias readers, we utilize an online survey experiment of representative U.S. pork consumers. Our findings confirm that consumers are generally unaware of ASF, with only about 27% of survey respondents aware of the recent global outbreak of ASF. Just over 30% of respondents consider ASF a potential threat to humans. Moreover, 46% of respondents,whom are all typically pork consumers, answered they would be unwilling to purchase pork if there were an ASF outbreak in the United States. Our results suggest placing messages on human health impact in the content of a news article can help mitigate potential adverse demand impacts. Provided that information regarding the human health impact is included in the body of the article, the impact of a slightly misleading headline on purchase intentions does not show a significant difference from direct messaging of food safety information. Meanwhile, the results emphasize the role of prior knowledge and perceptions, which proposes media cooperation to proactively inform the public about global ASF outbreaks and highlight its impact on human health as part of preparation efforts for a potential outbreak.

Contact: Otavio Bartalotti