| 1. |
- Nordström, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Do parents leave a smaller carbon footprint?
- 2017
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Do parents leave a smaller carbon footprint? While becoming a parent is transformational as one focuses more on the future, the time constraints are more binding right now. Using a unique data set that allows us to compare CO2 emissions from Swedish two-adult households with and without children, we find becoming a Swedish parent causes a person to leave a larger carbon footprint—due to changes in transportation patterns and food consumption choices.
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| 2. |
- Nordström, Jonas, et al.
(författare)
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Strategic Ignorance of Health Risk: Its Causes and Policy Consequences
- 2018
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We examine the causes and policy consequences of strategic (willful) ignorance of risk as an excuse to overengage in risky health behavior. In an experiment on Copenhagen adults, we allow subjects to choose whether to learn the calorie content of a meal before consuming it, and measure their subsequent calorie intake. We find strong evidence of strategic ignorance: 46% of subjects choose to ignore calorie information, and these subjects subsequently consume morecalories on average than they would have had they been informed. We find that strategically ignorant subjects downplay the health risk of their preferred meal being high-calorie, which we formally show is consistent with the theory of optimal expectations about risk. Further, we find that the prevalence of strategic ignorance largely negates the effectiveness of calorie information provision: on average, subjects who have the option to ignore calorie information consume about the same number of calories as subjects who are provided no information.
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| 3. |
- Thunstrom, Linda, et al.
(författare)
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Certainty and overconfidence in future preferences for food
- 2015
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Ingår i: Journal of Economic Psychology. - : Elsevier BV. - 1872-7719 .- 0167-4870. ; 51, s. 101-113
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We examine consumer certainty of future preferences and overconfidence in predicting future preferences. We explore how preference certainty and overconfidence impact the option value to revise today's decisions in the future. We design a laboratory experiment that creates a controlled choice environment, in which a subject's choice set (over food snacks) is known and constant over time, and the time frame is short - subjects make choices for themselves today, and for one to two weeks ahead. Our results suggest that even for such a seemingly straightforward choice task, only 45% of subjects can predict future choices accurately, while stated certainty of future preferences (one and two weeks ahead) is around 80%. We define overconfidence in predicting future preferences as: the difference between actual accuracy at predicting future choices and stated certainty of future preferences. Our results suggest strong evidence of overconfidence. We find that overconfidence increases with the level of stated certainty of future preferences. Finally, we observe that the option value people attach to future choice flexibility decreases with overconfidence. Overconfidence in future preferences affects economic welfare because it says people have too much incentive to lock themselves into future suboptimal decisions. Published by Elsevier B.V.
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| 4. |
- Thunstrom, Linda, et al.
(författare)
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Healthy meals on the menu : A Swedish field experiment on labelling and restaurant sales
- 2016
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Ingår i: African Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics. - 1993-3738. ; 11:1, s. 63-68
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Menu labelling of meals prepared away from home is a policy designed to help consumers make healthier food choices. In this paper we use a field experiment in Sweden to examine if a restaurant benefits from introducing a meal labelled as healthy on its menu by experiencing an overall increase in sales. We cannot reject the hypothesis that sales are the same before and after the introduction of a meal labelled as healthy on the menu, i.e. our data does not support the idea that restaurants increase their sales from supplying a meal labelled as healthy.
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| 5. |
- Thunström, Linda, et al.
(författare)
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Strategic self-ignorance
- 2016
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Ingår i: Journal of Risk and Uncertainty. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1573-0476 .- 0895-5646. ; 52:2, s. 117-136
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We examine strategic self-ignorance—the use of ignorance as an excuse to over-indulge in pleasurable activities that may be harmful to one’s future self. Our model shows that guilt aversion provides a behavioral rationale for present-biased agents to avoid information about negative future impacts of such activities. We then confront our model with data from an experiment using prepared, restaurant-style meals—a good that is transparent in immediate pleasure (taste) but non-transparent in future harm (calories). Our results support the notion that strategic self-ignorance matters: nearly three of five subjects (58%) chose to ignore free information on calorie content, leading at-risk subjects to consume significantly more calories. We also find evidence consistent with our model on the determinants of strategic self-ignorance.
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