Elsevier

Food Policy

Volume 33, Issue 6, December 2008, Pages 631-639
Food Policy

Consumer knowledge and meat consumption at home and away from home

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2008.02.006Get rights and content

Abstract

We investigate the roles of consumer knowledge and sociodemographic factors in the consumption of meat products at home and away from home. Censored dependent variables and endogenous dietary knowledge are accommodated by developing and estimating a simultaneous-equations system. Results suggest endogeneity of knowledge and support the system approach to demand functions for meat products. Dietary knowledge decreases consumption of beef and pork at home and away from home but does not affect poultry or fish consumption in either location. Men eat more meat and fish than women, meat consumption declines with age, and regional and racial/ethnic differences are present.

Introduction

Over the past decade, the Federal government has promoted healthier eating and food manufacturers have responded by providing foods, new or reformulated, with added healthy attributes and claims. Consumer awareness of the basic ingredients found in foods was heightened after the passage of the 1990 Nutritional Label and Education Act (NLEA). The NLEA requires mandatory food labeling on most packaged foods but not on fresh meats. Packages for fresh meats often contain little or no nutritional information. Thus, consumers who purchase fresh meats such as beef, pork, poultry, and fish normally rely on personal dietary knowledge or the knowledge of a family member, associate, nutritionist, or health-care professional. Recent empirical evidence suggests, for instance, that dietary knowledge or advice provided by health-care professionals can improve individuals’ dietary behavior (Loureiro and Nayga, 2007).

For many, meat is the main course of each meal. The US tops the world in per capita consumption of meats, followed by Spain and Denmark. Americans ate 200 pounds, boneless weight, of beef, pork, chicken, and fish per person in 2005 (USDA-ERS, 2008a). The purpose of this study is to determine whether dietary knowledge influences consumption of beef, pork, chicken, and fish products by location.

Although a great deal of information is available about beef, pork, poultry, and fish production, relatively little is known about the impact of dietary knowledge on the uses of these products. Descriptive analyses have been conducted to determine who eats beef and pork at home and away from home (Davis and Lin, 2005a, Davis and Lin, 2005b), but no similar studies have been conducted for chicken or fish products. Lin et al. (2003) postulate that the changing racial and ethnic landscape in the US, the graying of Americans, and the growing popularity of eating out will influence future demands for beef, pork, poultry, and fish.

Null (1978, p. 17) notes that “nutritional awareness is the first step to good health”. As obesity rates continue to climb, good diets have become more important in a society where the views on dietary information about meat consumption are mixed. The new US Dietary Guidelines, jointly issued by the US Departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture (USDA-USDHHS, 2005), place major emphasis on fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat dairy products. However, little information is available as to how dietary guidelines influence consumers’ decisions to purchase certain foods.

Previous studies have addressed the role of dietary knowledge in the consumption of food products, including fats and oils (Chern et al., 1995, Kim and Chern, 1999), fat-modified foods (Coleman and Wilson, 2002), egg (Brown and Schrader, 1990), meat (Kaabia et al., 2001, Kinnucan et al., 1997), fruits and vegetables (MacLellan et al., 2004), grains (Lin and Yen, 2008), and 25 food groups consumed at and away from home (Lin et al., 2003). Dietary knowledge has also been linked to the diet quality of children (Variyam et al., 1999b), the elderly (Howard et al., 1998), and female household heads (Ramezani and Roeder, 1995). With respect to nutrient intake, links have been reported between knowledge and intake of fiber (Kim et al., 2000, Park and Davis, 2001, Variyam et al., 1996a, Variyam et al., 1996b), energy and nutrient density (Bhargava, 2004), and fat and cholesterol (Park and Davis, 2001, Variyam et al., 1997, Variyam et al., 1999a).

This study is the first, to our knowledge, to examine whether or not dietary knowledge affects consumption of beef, pork, poultry, and fish at home differently from it does consumption away from home.1 Unlike most previous studies, we endogenize dietary knowledge by hypothesizing that knowledge is affected by factors which may or may not directly influence meat and fish consumption. Further, food consumption data from cross sectional surveys often contain a notable proportion of observations not consuming specific food items. Because statistical procedures not accommodating censoring or endogeneity can produce biased estimates, we construct a system of censored equations with an endogenous regressor. Econometric specification of this type has not been used in the meat demand literature.2 In addition to knowledge, the effects of other socio-demographic variables are examined using data from the 1994–96 Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals (CSFII) and its companion Diet and Health Knowledge Survey (DHKS) (USDA-ARS, 2000).

Section snippets

Econometric model

We develop a simultaneous-equations system in which each consumption variable (yi) can be censored at zero and a continuous endogenous variable for knowledge (d0) appears on the right-hand side (RHS) of each equationd0=zα+u0,logyi=xβi+γid0+viif RHS>0,yi=0if RHS0,i=1,,m,where z and x are vectors of weakly exogenous variables, α and βi are conformable vectors of parameters, γi are scalar parameters, and the error terms [u0, v′]′  [u0, v1,  , vm]′ are distributed as (m + 1)-variate normal N(0,Σ) with

Data

The USDA has conducted periodic food consumption surveys since the 1930s. The 1994–96 CSFII and its companion DHKS (USDA-ARS, 2000) provide the data for this study.

Results

The nine-equation system, consisting of the dietary knowledge equation and the demand equations for beef, pork, poultry, and fish at home and away from home, is estimated with the maximum simulated likelihood (MSL) procedure, using 300 GHK replications (Hajivassiliou, 1994), as described in Appendix B. Unlike the case of instrumental variable estimation for which exclusion conditions are needed for identification, in MSL estimation the nonlinear identification criteria are met due to the

Concluding remarks

In the US, high intakes of fat and saturated fat, and low intakes of fiber and calcium-containing foods are associated with several chronic diseases such as coronary heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, hypertension, overweight, and osteoporosis (Frazao, 1999). These diet-related health problems are costly to the society. For example, diet-related premature deaths from coronary heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes are estimated to account for 5.3% of all deaths in the US and cost the

Acknowledgement

The authors benefited from comments by Jan Rosinski, two anonymous reviewers, and participants at the 2006 Joint Conference of the Chinese Economic Association in North America (CEANA) and the Taiwanese Economic Association (TEA) in Taipei, Taiwan, and the 2007 annual meeting of the Southern Agricultural Economics Association in Mobile, Alabama.

References (53)

  • V.A. Hajivassiliou

    Classical estimation methods for LDV models using simulation

  • M.R. Ransom

    A comment on consumer demand systems with binding non-negativity constraints

    Journal of Econometrics

    (1987)
  • T.J. Wales et al.

    Estimation of consumer demand systems with binding non-negativity constraints

    Journal of Econometrics

    (1983)
  • T. Amemiya

    Multivariate regression and simultaneous equation models when the dependent variables are truncated normal

    Econometrica

    (1974)
  • R. Bean

    In China, fish means prosperity

    AgExporter

    (2003)
  • A. Bhargava

    Socio-economic and behavior factors are predictors of food use in the National Food Stamp Program Survey

    British Journal of Nutrition

    (2004)
  • D.J. Brown et al.

    Cholesterol information and shell egg consumption

    American Journal of Agricultural Economics

    (1990)
  • W.S. Chern et al.

    Information, health risk beliefs, and the demand for fats and oils

    Review of Economics and Statistics

    (1995)
  • L.M. Coleman et al.

    Consumers’ knowledge and use of fat-modified products

    Journal of Family and Consumer Sciences

    (2002)
  • Davis, C.G., Lin, B., 2005a. Factors affecting U.S. beef consumption. Electronic Outlook Report from the Economic...
  • Davis, C.G., Lin, B., 2005b. Factors affecting U.S. pork consumption. Electronic Outlook Report from the Economic...
  • D. Dong et al.

    Quantity and quality effects of advertising: a demand system approach

    Agricultural Economics

    (2007)
  • E.A. Finkelstein et al.

    State-level estimates of annual medical expenditures attributable to obesity

    Obesity Research

    (2004)
  • Frazao, E., 1999. High costs of poor eating patterns in the United States. In: E. Frazao (Ed.). America’s Eating...
  • X.M. Gao et al.

    A microeconometric analysis of the U.S. meat demand

    Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics

    (1994)
  • Guenther, P.M., Juan, W., Reedy, J., Britten, P., Lino, M., Carlson, A., Hiza, H.H., Krebs-Smith, S.M., 2007. Diet...
  • J.H. Howard et al.

    Investigating relationships between nutritional knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs, and dietary adequacy of the elderly

    Journal of Nutrition for the Elderly

    (1998)
  • International Food Information Council Foundation, 2008. Trends in obesity-related media coverage....
  • N.L. Johnson et al.
    (1994)
  • M.B. Kaabia et al.

    Health information and the demand for meat in Spain

    European Review of Agricultural Economics

    (2001)
  • S. Kim et al.

    The effect of food label use on nutrient intakes: an endogenous switching regression analysis

    Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics

    (2000)
  • S.R. Kim et al.

    Alternative measures of health information and demand for fats and oils in Japan

    Journal of Consumer Affairs

    (1999)
  • H.W. Kinnucan et al.

    Effects of health information and generic advertising on U.S. meat demand

    American Journal of Agricultural Economics

    (1997)
  • S. Kotz et al.

    Continuous Multivariate Distributions

    (2000)
  • Lin, B.H., Variyam, J., Allshouse, J., Cromartie, J., 2003. Food and Agricultural Commodity Consumption in the United...
  • B. Lin et al.

    Consumer knowledge, food label use, and grain consumption in the US

    Applied Economics

    (2008)
  • Cited by (43)

    • Consumer profile analysis for different types of meat in Spain

      2017, Meat Science
      Citation Excerpt :

      As for the “sex” variable, our findings differed from those of Yen, Lin, and Davis (2008), who reported that men consume more poultry than women. Regarding the “age” variable, our outcomes coincided with those of Yen et al. (2008), who demonstrated that consumption in younger individuals is higher than in people over 61 years of age. In geographical terms, the average consumption frequency of chicken was higher in the Northeast, East, North-Central and Madrid regions.

    • Understanding consumers' perception of lamb meat using free word association

      2016, Meat Science
      Citation Excerpt :

      Lamb meat consumption was more frequent among older male participants than among younger females (Table 2). Similar age and gender differences in familiarity with meat and meat products have been reported by other authors (Verbeke, Pérez-Cueto, Barcellos, Krystallis, & Grunert, 2010; Yen, Lin, & Davis, 2008). Besides, lamb meat consumption has been reported to be low among young people (MARM, 2008b), which can be explained considering that they are not usually willing to spend time cooking (Bernués et al., 2012).

    • Demographics, societal aging, and meat consumption in China

      2015, Journal of Integrative Agriculture
    View all citing articles on Scopus

    Research for this paper was supported by USDA-ERS Cooperative Agreements 43-3AEK-4-80048 and 43-3AEM-4-80052. The views in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the US Department of Agriculture.

    View full text