A randomized group approach to identifying label effects

Abstract

Motivated by the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard (NBFDS), which requires companies to label bioengineered food products, this paper examines the choice effects of using a symbol approved by the standard relative to using text to disclose that a food product has bioengineered contents. Choice effects were determined using a randomized group design that assigned respondents to one-of-two labeled choice experiment groups. One group selected products that used the symbol disclosure and the other group selected products using text disclosure. Besides a label, the price was the only attribute displayed to respondents during the choice experiment and varied at three levels. The same price levels were used for all labels, and prices were balanced within a label, and balanced and orthogonal across labels. This randomized design using a discrete choice experiment allows for the identification of group effects, which in this paper are the choice effects associated with the form of bioengineering disclosure.