Factors affecting nutritional food label use in Greece are examined using primary data collected from personal interviews with consumers shopping at supermarkets in Athens. The econometric approach treats nutrition knowledge, where appropriate, as an endogenous variable when estimating the models for general label use, degree of general label use and use of information on nutrient content. The results suggest that nutrition knowledge has a strong effect on general label use, degree of use, and on use of nutrient content concerning fat, ingredients and vitamins/minerals, thus confirming the hypothesised link between consumers' nutrition knowledge and behaviour. Socio-demographic effects are also evident in all models.

In this paper, we review recent advances in experimental auctions and provide practical advice and guidelines for researchers. We focus on issues related to randomisation to treatment and causal identification of treatment effects, design issues such as selection between different elicitation formats, multiple auction groups in a single session and house money effects. We also discuss sample size and power analysis issues in relation to recent trends in experimental research about pre-registration and pre-analysis plans. We position our discussion with respect to how the agricultural economics profession could benefit from practices adapted in the experimental economics community. We then present the pros and cons of moving auction studies from the laboratory to the field and review the recent literature on behavioural factors that have been identified as important for auction outcomes.

In this paper, we review published studies to assess the influence of time preferences on human health behaviour. Our review indicates that elicited discount rates for health have been found to be higher than those for money in both the social and private context. We discuss the importance of discount rates for public policy since high time discount rates can contribute to governmental emphasis on acute health care, rather than preventive health care. We then examine how time preferences interrelate with specific health concerns such as smoking or obesity. We find that even when time preferences are elicited in the monetary domain, they can be successful in predicting smoking cessation and likewise for obesity. We also discuss how time preferences relate with teen risk taking behavior.JEL codesD91, I0

We elicited incentivized measures of risk and time preferences from a sample of undergraduate students in Athens, Greece, in waves that preceded and overlapped with the COVID-19 pandemic. We exploited the timing of several events that occurred in the course of the pandemic (e.g., first occurrence of cases and deaths, curfew, relaxation of curfew etc.) and estimated structural parameters for various theories of risk and time preferences comparing these with pre-pandemic estimates. We find no effect between the different waves or other key events of the pandemic, despite the fact that we have about 1000 responses across all waves. Overall, our subjects exhibit intertemporal stability of risk and time preferences despite the significant effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on public health and the global economy.

Over the last few years, the interest on alternative protein sources, such as edible insects, has been growing rapidly. However, Western consumers’ acceptance of insects as a food source is very low, mainly due to unfamiliarity with insect-based food. We investigate consumers’ attitude and behavior and estimate their willingness to pay (WTP) a premium for three products that vary on a between-subjects basis, direct or indirect consumption of insects. The data were collected through an online questionnaire of 451 consumers in Greece and WTP was elicited using the contingent valuation method (CVM). Our results show that the majority of Greek consumers are not willing to pay a premium for an insect-based energy bar and cookie (direct entomophagy) and they would require a discount to acquire such products. On the other hand, consumer acceptance is higher for a gilt-head bream that is fed with insect-based feed (indirect entomophagy). Results show that younger adults, indirect consumption of insects, looking for new sources of food and evaluating certification and trust as important for innovative products, are all associated with a higher WTP. Consumers with positive WTP are on average willing to pay a premium of 15.8, 17, and 31.8 per cent for the energy bar, cookie, and gilt-head bream, respectively, while consumers that are not WTP a premium would require discounts of 43.8, 42.4, and 30.7 per cent, respectively.