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

该项目将研究消费者在食品风险背景下的决定以及由此产生的旨在遏制这些风险的法规。我们将重点关注消费者信息作为监管工具的作用。该项目将在我们对个人面临风险时的行为的理解与限制风险的监管设计之间建立一座桥梁。我们试图回答以下问题：当消费者面临风险时，他们的反应如何？他们的反应如何因国籍而异？这些差异对国家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工具。由于食物安全及营养涵盖多种污染物/细菌及多种食物产品的营养素，研究将分两部分进行，集中于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，即二恶英，它存在于鱼类或乳制品等产品中。将使用社会学方法分析监管框架，强调在法国和德国通知消费者时确定警告/警告和处理科学不确定性。第二部分将侧重于一种特定的产品，即酸奶，它既有好处，如预防肥胖，也有风险，如二恶英。将在法国和德国进行经济实验室实验，对消费者信息引起的行为变化进行跨文化比较。在这个实验中，不同的健康信息框架将呈现给消费者。将根据风险监管的后果对结果进行评估。法国和德国消费者之间的风险信息的估值的差异，实验之前和之后，将进行分析的基础上的问卷调查和访谈，并将允许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.