• When the government mandates that sellers (of food products, say) reveal some information to potential purchasers, the message that the consumers take away from the disclosure might not be what the government intended to convey.
• The perceived motivation(s) behind the government's requirement could affect consumer responses. Some mandates are aimed to convey a verified health risk; others might satisfy a somewhat nebulous consumer "right to know," even if no health risk is involved. Interest group pressures or social values of some sort (e.g., supporting domestic employment) are other motivations for disclosure mandates.
• People are more disposed to be influenced by the information relayed in a mandated disclosure if they believe the motive behind the mandate is new research findings (as opposed to political pressures). Problems arise when consumers are misled by mandated information; such misleading is likely when consumers misperceive the motives behind the mandate.
• The Bar-Gill, Schkade, and Sunstein article itself seems motivated by proposed and sometimes enacted government mandates that require firsm that sell foods including GMOs to indicate that fact. The potential issue is that there seems to be no evidence that GMO-containing foods possess higher health risks than do other foods; nonetheless, the mandated information could lead consumers to believe that GMOs are known to be unsafe.
• The authors’ Mturk survey (n=1675) concerns either GMOs or a fictitious synthetic food preservative, Z25.
• The government could: (1) let voluntary disclosure do all the work (that is, take no action); (2) mandate disclosure; or (3) mandate a warning. Government motives are either: (1) right-to-know; (2) political pressure; or (3) new research.
• After learning the government action, some subjects are told the government motive, while others are asked what they think the motive is.
• Subjects rate perceived risk (ex post and, for GMOs, ex ante, too) on a 0 to 100 scale, and indicate their intentions to purchase.
• False inferences may be a problem: posterior risk changes as much from new research as from right-to-know motivations; perhaps consumers do not trust that right-to-know motives are pure.
• A political pressure motive seems to lower the perceived risk of GMOs after disclosure (relative to no action).
• Subjects with strong prior beliefs about GMOs do not appreciably alter their beliefs based on government actions and motives.
• Can counter-advertising fix the false inference problem?
