Is mental accounting of farm produce associated with more consumption of own-produced food?

Jiaqi Huang*, Gerrit Antonides, Fengying Nie

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

8 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This study examines whether mental accounting theory is applicable to consumption of own-produced food of smallholder farm households. We are motivated by the farm household's procedure of allocating own-produced food, and some evidence of inflexible use of own-produced food reserve. Using hypothetical scenarios of food reserve and consumption, we find that smallholder farm households show evidence of having a mental budget for own-produced food for self-consumption, tracking their consumption against the budget, and compensating for earlier over- or underconsumption. A substantial number of people used the reserve of their own produced food, exceeding their consumption needs, as their mental budget to guide their consumption, leading to an outcome of overconsumption of own produce. Furthermore, we explored factors of mental accounting and proposed policy implications of the study.

Original languageEnglish
Article number101594
JournalJournal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics
Volume88
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2020

Keywords

  • Food consumption
  • Mental accounting
  • Own-produced food
  • Smallholder farm households

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