Information and the trade-off between food safety and food security in rural markets: Experimental evidence from Malawi

Abstract

We implemented a clustered randomized control trial with experimental auctions among 1,098 rural households in Malawi to evaluate whether providing training about food safety increased demand for safe groundnut. We measured the impact of training on demand for observable and unobservable dimensions of quality, at harvest and in the lean season. We found that the control group who was not trained valued sorted grains (an indicator of observable quality) only. At harvest, both trained and untrained consumers placed statistically equal premiums on food safety labeling (an indicator of otherwise-unobservable quality). However, in the lean season, untrained consumers’ premiums for food safety labeling disappeared, while trained consumers’ premiums for food safety labeling increased.