Risk, Uncertainty and Regulation: A Comparison between France and Germany in the Field of Food Safety and Nutrition

该项目将在食品风险的背景下研究消费者的决定，以及由此产生的旨在阻止这些风险的法规。我们将重点发挥消费者信息作为监管工具的作用。这个项目将在我们理解个人在面临风险时的行为和为限制风险而设计的监管之间架起一座桥梁。我们试图回答以下问题：消费者在面临风险时会如何行动，以及他们的反应因国籍不同而有何不同，是法国人还是德国人？这些差异对各国和欧洲层面的监管选择有何影响？我们的方法结合了社会学和经济学的工具。由于食品安全和营养包括各种污染物/细菌和众多食品中的多种营养物质，这项研究将分两部分进行，重点是一种污染物或一种产品。第一部分将着眼于一种单一的食物污染物，即在鱼或乳制品等产品中发现的二恶英。将使用社会学方法来分析监管框架，重点是确定建议/警告，以及在通知法国和德国消费者时如何处理科学不确定性。第二部分将重点介绍一种特定的产品，即酸奶，既有预防肥胖的好处，也有二恶英等风险。经济实验室实验将在法国和德国进行，以提供消费者信息导致的行为变化的跨文化比较。在这项实验中，不同框架的健康信息将呈现给消费者。结果将根据风险监管的后果进行评估。法国和德国消费者在实验前后对风险信息的评价差异，将基于问卷和采访进行分析，并将整合社会学和经济学分析。

This project will study consumers’ decisions in a context of food risks and the resulting regulations aiming at thwarting these risks. We will focus on the role of consumer information as a regulatory tool. This project will build a bridge between our understanding of individuals’ behaviour when facing risk and the design of regulation for limiting risk. We seek to answer the following questions: How do consumers act when they face risks and how do their reactions differ by nationality, being French or German? What are the consequences of these differences on regulatory choices at both national and European levels? Our methodology combines sociological and economic tools. As food safety and nutrition encompass various contaminants/ bacteria and many nutrients across numerous food products, the study will be organised in two parts focusing either on one contaminant or one product. The first part will look at a single food contaminant, namely dioxin, that is found in products such as fish or dairy products. A sociological methodology will be used to analyse the regulatory framing, emphasising the determination of advisories/warnings and the handling of scientific uncertainty when informing consumers in France and Germany. The second part will focus on a specific product, namely yogurt, presenting both benefits, e.g. obesity prevention, and risks, e.g. dioxins. Economic laboratory experiments will be conducted in France and in Germany to provide a cross cultural comparison of behavioural changes resulting from consumer information. Different framings of health information will be presented to consumers in this experiment. The results will be evaluated with regard to the consequences for risk regulation. The differences in valuations of risk information between French and German consumers, before and after the experiment, will be analysed based on questionnaires and interviews and will allow integrating the sociological and economic analyses.