Willingness to Pay for Food Safety: Sensitivity to Duration and Severity of Illness

The vast majority of foodborne-illness cases result from exposure to pathogens and cause only short term illness, yet research on economic valuation of health risk is dominated by the study of mortality risk. To help fill this gap, we provide new stated preference estimates of the value of reducing the risk of illness from foodborne pathogens with a focus on short term morbidity. Our survey was administered over the internet to a panel randomly recruited from the adult United States population by Knowledge Networks and yielded about 3,500 completed surveys. Illness was described by a full factorial design that varied duration (1, 3, or 7 days), severity (three levels ranging from upset stomach to an illness requiring hospitalization), mortality risk conditional on illness (zero, 1/10,000, 1/1,000), and food type (chicken, ground beef, packaged deli meat). The reduction in risk associated with purchasing a safer brand of food varied between 1/10,000 and 3/10,000 per meal. Estimated median WTP per case avoided ranges from about $8,300 to $16,400 to reduce risk to the adult respondent and from $23,600 to $30,500 to reduce risk to his or her child. Estimated WTP increases with duration and severity of illness, reduction in risk, and is higher for chicken than for ground beef and packaged deli meat. WTP to reduce mortality risk is estimated imprecisely but is comparable to accepted estimates. WTP is larger for women, respondents who observe safe food handling practices, perceive their own risk to be higher than average, and older respondents, but smaller for those who have primary responsibility for preparing households meals.