2015 Articles
Pathos and Ethos: Emotions and Willingness to Pay for Tobacco Products
In this article we use data from a multi-country Randomized Control Trial study on the effect of anti-tobacco pictorial warnings on an individual’s emotions and behavior. By exploiting the exogenous variations of images as an instrument, we are able to identify the effect of emotional responses. We use a range of outcome variables, from cognitive (risk perception and depth of processing) to behavioural (willingness to buy and willingness to pay). Our findings suggest that the odds of buying a tobacco product can be reduced by 80% if the negative affect elicited by the images increases by one standard deviation. More importantly from a public policy perspective, not all emotions behave alike, as eliciting shame, anger, or distress proves more effective in reducing smoking than fear and disgust.
Subjects
Files
- journal.pone.0139542.pdf application/pdf 660 KB Download File
Also Published In
- Title
- PLoS ONE
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0139542
More About This Work
- Academic Units
- Economics
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science
- Published Here
- January 6, 2016