Food Waste, Date Labels, and Risk Preferences: An Experimental Exploration
AAEA Past President and member release new research in AEPP
In January 2025, FSIS and FDA requested seeking public input on food date labeling. The Request for Information (Docket No. FSIS-2024-0021) seeks information on industry practices and preferences for date labeling, research results on consumer perceptions of date labeling, and any impact date labeling may have on food waste.
In the new article “Food Waste, Date Labels, and Risk Preferences: An Experimental Exploration” published in the Applied Economic Perspectives & Policy (AEPP), AAEA Past President, Norbert Wilson from Duke University, and Ruiqing Miao from Auburn University look at how consumers change their premediated food waste and willingness to pay (WTP) when they see a simple date label that indicates quality ("Best by") versus one that signals safety ("Use by"). It also examines how these changes depend on the type of food and consumers' attitudes toward risk, including risk aversion, loss aversion, and how they perceive probabilities, based on prospect theory. The goal is to understand the effects of simplifying date labels and to add to the research on how different food waste reduction strategies affect consumers in various ways.
“We are excited to contribute to the work on reducing food waste. The Food Safety and Inspection Service has an open request for information on date labels like “Best by” and “Use by” affecting food waste. Our experiment found that date labels affect how people think about waste. People also respond differently to these labels, given their thoughts about financial losses, what is called loss aversion. We find evidence that simplifying the date labels could lower waste for some products but not for others. Further, we see that changing labels may have little effect on some consumers because they dislike financial losses more than others. Our findings suggest food waste reduction efforts like simplifying date labels are a start but will not prevent food waste alone,” said agricultural economist Norbert Wilson, Duke University.
“One key contribution of this work is using prospect theory—a decision-making framework that accounts for risks and losses—to understand how consumers’ food waste behavior may change when facing different date labels and food items,” said agricultural economist Ruiqing Miao, Auburn University.
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ABOUT AAEA: Established in 1910, the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA) is the leading professional association for agricultural and applied economists, with 2,500 members in more than 60 countries. Members of the AAEA work in academic or government institutions as well as in industry and not-for-profit organizations, and engage in a variety of research, teaching, and outreach activities in the areas of agriculture, the environment, food, health, and international development. The AAEA publishes three journals, the Journal of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (an open access journal), the American Journal of Agricultural Economics and Applied Economic Perspectives & Policy, as well as the online magazine Choices and the online open access publication series Applied Economics Teaching Resources. To learn more, visit www.aaea.org.
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