How can reporting on foreign animal diseases affect meat purchases? The case of African swine fever

Consumers tend to overestimate food risks, and news reporting that draws attention to the deadly aspects of animal disease can cause fear in consumers even when a disease is not a food safety issue. We utilize an online survey experiment with U.S. pork consumers to assess how prior knowledge of African swine fever (ASF) and how news headlines and article content can affect pork purchases. We find that consumers are generally unaware of ASF, and almost half of respondents, who are all typically pork consumers, would be unwilling to purchase pork if there were an ASF outbreak in the United States. Within our experiment consumers who have less prior knowledge of ASF hesitated to buy pork, when first hearing of an outbreak. While additional information that ASF is not a human health threat helped mitigate pork avoidance, the placement of food safety assurance in either the headline or body of the article does not show a significantly different impact on consumer willingness to pay. As part of preparation efforts for a potential outbreak, our results emphasize the role of consumers’ prior knowledge and perceptions of the disease, which relays the importance of media cooperation in proactively informing the public about ASF outbreaks and highlighting the nonimpact on human health.