Given the credence nature of food quality and food safety attributes, consumers cannot easily verify whether food is high quality or is safe to eat, thus they rely on abstract systems of regulation and quality signals such as brands to make informed consumption choices. In fact, trust is recognized as a rational strategy that reduces consumers’ uncertainty when purchasing goods with credence attributes. While trust in food is a topical issue in an era of increasingly complex food systems, how trust and more precisely brand trust affects consumers’ perceptions of food is a relatively new research area in food economics. This thesis aims to answer questions such as what drives trust in the actors within the Canadian food system (i.e. government, farmers, food manufacturers, and food retailers) and in food brands, and the relationship between that trust and consumer confidence in food quality and food safety. Previous studies on institutional and system trust have been carried out primarily in the sociology, marketing and political sciences disciplines, while a few studies in food economics have investigated the influence of institutional trust and reported the degree of public trust in market actors. This study extends previous research on consumer trust in the context of food by developing a conceptual model in which trust in the food system and brand trust are expected to evolve to public confidence in credence attributes and lead to consumer commitment to food brands. Inspired from a comprehensive synthesis of the literature on consumer trust, the theoretical background suggests that consumer confidence in food attributes is jointly determined by trust in the food system (system-based trust) and brand trust (product-based trust), and it is moderated by consumer characteristics (personal-based trust) – namely: risk, past consumption experience and ethically-motivated behaviour. As well, consumers are assumed to perceive an actor or a brand as trustworthy through the influence of four postulated dimensions of trust: perceived competence, credibility, benevolence and reputation. A Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) approach is used for the empirical analysis. Data were gathered through an online survey of consumers conducted across Canada in July 2012 focusing on fresh chicken and packaged green salad products. The results show that individually none of the postulated antecedents of trust (i.e. competence, credibility, benevolence and reputation) was a significant driver for trust, especially for packaged salad. Unlike previous research on institutional trust and brand trust that uses a number of separate dimensions to measure trust predominantly in non-food contexts, this thesis finds that trust in the food system and food products could be measured differently by taking into account the interactive effects of perceived competence, credibility, reputation and benevolence on public trust. As such, the findings suggest that Canadian consumers tend to trust brands of chicken and packaged salad when these products are perceived as high quality, are backed by credible information, have a good reputation and, at the same time, enhance consumers’ welfare. In fact, a brand cannot be perceived as high quality and safe to eat (brand competence) without containing transparent information signalling its quality and safety (brand credibility). Additionally, results reveal some apparent product-specific effects: brand trust matters in fostering consumer confidence in chicken but not for salad. Furthermore, trust in the food system as a whole appears to be more influential in leading to public confidence in credence attributes than trust in food brands in the case of chicken. As such, it appears that trust in actors within the food supply chain is more important than relying on individual products. As well, the analysis shows that while psychographic variables (risk aversion, past consumption experience) and some demographics (e.g. gender, education) moderate the relationship between trust in the food system and brands for chicken, this is not the case for salad. In terms of marketing implications, the results suggest that while brands are useful signalling mechanisms, trust in these brands is not the main driver for consumer confidence in credence attributes. Furthermore, the much stronger effect of system trust implies that decision-makers would benefit by investing in building trust relationships with the public. Transparent communication and credible assurances about the practices and the intentions within the food system could be a way to gain and maintain public trust and, ultimately, consumer confidence in food quality and food safety.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / An investigation of credit card debt: the effect of price and income expectations and the impact on consumption. Includes bibliographical references (p. 108-111).

Thesis (MTech (Information Technology))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2016. / Consumer trust is a core element for any e-commerce website. This study aimed to explore attributes of business-to-consumers (B2C) e-commerce websites that can communicate and engender trust from the users’ perspective using user-centred design. E-commerce websites are known to have features such as security certificates and encryption methods to ensure trust, but this requires technical knowhow to understand. The technologies used to develop websites have improved so far, but it has little effect on improving the trust of the users of e-commerce mostly in developing countries (Africa in particular). E-commerce users do not realise that these features have been put in place for the trustworthiness of the websites which contributes to their reluctance to conduct business transactions online, thus reducing their buying intentions. There is a need to design e-commerce websites to communicate/ convey trust from the users’ perspective. The study explored various sources of data to obtain insight and understanding of the research problem—user-centred design (UCD) group activity with users, interviews with developers, and secondary prior literature. Using UCD as the main methodology, an intensive UCD workshop activity with a group of eight e-commerce users was carried out. Furthermore, to obtain the view of experts (developers) on what is currently done to engender trust in B2C e-commerce websites, interviews with four respondents were also carried out. These interviews were intended to reduce any prejudice or bias and to obtain a clearer understanding of the phenomenon being studied. The findings from the study revealed six main attributes to engender trust, namely aesthetics design, security and information privacy, functionality design, trustworthiness based on content, development process, and vendor attributes. Proposed guidelines for each of the attributes were outlined. The findings from the users showed that those who were acquainted with the e-commerce technologies were those whose backgrounds are computer and technology related. Most users focused on aesthetics design, functionality, and security of their privacy and private details. Less emphasis was placed on the technology behind the e-commerce websites. Users use their aesthetic and cognitive value in their judgement for trust. The findings from the research were further validated using the Domestication of Technology Theory (DTT), which resulted in the development of a user-centred e-commerce trust model.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Economics / Steven P. Cassou / This dissertation consists of three essays in asymmetric empirical macroeconomics. Making macroeconomic policies has become increasingly difficult because of intricate relationships among macroeconomic variables. In this dissertation, we apply state-of-the-art macroeconometric techniques to investigate asymmetric relationships between key macroeconomic aggregates. Our findings have important macroeconomic policy implications. An analogue to the Phillips curve shows a positive relationship between inflation and capacity utilization. Some recent empirical work has shown that this relationship has broken down when using data after the mid-1980s and several popular explanations for this changing relationship, including advancements in technology and globalization, were put forward as possible explanations. In the first essay, we empirically investigate this issue using several threshold error correction models. We find, in the long run, a 1% increase in the rate of inflation leads to approximately a 0.0046% increase in capacity utilization. The asymmetric error correction structure shows that changes in capacity utilization show significant corrective measures only during booms while changes in inflation correct during both phases of the business cycle with the corrections being stronger during recessions. We also find that, in the short run, changes in the inflation rate do Granger cause capacity utilization while changes in capacity utilization do not Granger cause inflation. The Granger causality from inflation to capacity utilization can be interpreted as supporting recent calls made in the popular press by some economists that it may be desirable for the Federal Reserve Bank to try to induce some inflation in an effort to stimulate the economy. In the second essay, we examine the role of consumer confidence on economic activities like households’ consumption in good and bad economic times. We consider the “news” versus “animal spirit” approach interpretation of consumer confidence. In the wake of the Great Recession of 2008-09, many have called for confidence-boosting policies to help speed up the recovery. A recent study has reinforced these policy calls by showing that the Michigan Consumer Confidence Index contains important information about “news” on future productivity that has long-lasting effects on economic activities like aggregate consumption. Using US data, we show this conclusion is more nuanced when considering an economy that has different potential states. We investigate regime-switching models which use the National Bureau of Economic Research US business cycle expansion and contraction data to create an indicator series that distinguishes bad and good economic times and use this series to investigate impulse responses and variance decompositions. We show the connection between consumer confidence to some types of consumer purchases is important during good economic times but is relatively unimportant during bad economic times. We also use this type of model to investigate the connection between news and consumer confidence and this connection is also shown to be state dependent. In the context of the animal spirits versus news debate, our findings show that during economic expansions, consumer confidence shocks likely reflect news, while during economic contractions, consumer confidence shocks are consistent with animal spirits. These findings also have important implications for recent policy debates which consider whether confidence boosting policies, like raising inflation expectations on big-ticket items such as automobiles or business equipment, would lead to a faster recovery. The third essay investigates expectation shocks and their effect on the economy. For instance, this essay investigates whether the economy responds to expectation shocks in an importantly asymmetric way. A growing literature shows that agents' expectation about the future can lead to boom-bust cycles. These studies so far ignore the transmission effects of expectations on current economic activities across the policy regimes. Using the Survey of Professional Forecasters and Livingstone Survey data, this study empirically investigates the effects of expectation shocks on macroeconomic activities when policy regimes shift. Identifying a structural shock to expectations by using the timing of information in the forecast surveys and actual data releases, we show that the effects of agents' expectations about the future on current macroeconomic activities are asymmetric across the policy regimes. In particular, we find that a perception of good times ahead typically leads to a significant rise in current measures of economic activity in a hawkish regime relative to a dovish regime. We also find that monetary policy's reactions to agents' expectations are asymmetric across the policy regimes. Our findings do not support the views of critics of the central banks, who argued that keeping monetary policy too easy for too long is responsible for fueling the booms. Instead, our findings support the traditional view that a positive (negative) expectation about the future coincides with an anticipatory tightening (easing) of monetary policy.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Human senses for taste, odor, and visual assessment allow consumers to be selective when it comes to choosing their drinking water. In addition to wanting aesthetically pleasing water to drink, consumers want to know if their water is safe and may have misconceptions on what possible health risk contaminants could be lurking in their water supply. This thesis aimed to measure reaction of zerovalent nanoiron (nZVI) in water and human saliva, evaluate consumer's perceptions of taste, odor, and risk in their drinking water, and investigate the effectiveness of community water systems in communicating water quality information to their consumers. Since nZVI, including commercially available Nanofer 25S, is widely being used in water treatment processes and has future potential for use in fortifying foods, the exposure to these engineered nanoparticles will increase for humans and aquatic organisms. Thus, the first part of the thesis was to develop a quantitative analytical technique to measure the iron levels at environmentally relevant concentrations. Researchers developed a colorimetric assay using 1, 10-phenanthroline as an assay to determine the amount of ferrous ions produced from different iron materials, including ferrous(II)sulfate, nZVI, and goethite. Resulting ferrous ion measurements indicate that the maximum production of ferrous ions varied among the iron materials. Nanofer25S did not undergo 100% conversion to ferrous ions, as expected, goethite had no production of ferrous ions, and ferrous(II)sulfate was 100% ferrous ions. The total iron, as measured by atomic absorption for all iron materials were equal. The reactivity of these iron materials were also assessed in different water qualities ranging in salt concentrations. The capacity to produce ferrous ion did not change when added to nanopure water, tap water, and inorganic solution that is equivalent to the high ionic strength of saliva. Toxicology data for nZVI exposure to humans and aquatic organisms are limited. For that reason, authors of this manuscript measured salivary lipid oxidation (SLO) potential for the different iron materials in human saliva. They also developed an artificial saliva recipe to ensure repeatability and comparable results among laboratories due to human saliva's variability day by day. This simulated human saliva contained salts, proteins, and lipids. Using thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARs), both Nanofer25S and ferrous(II)sulfate induced in-vitro SLO with human saliva. Goethite was unreactive. SLO results from this study have implications for flavor effects of nZVI in drinking water. The second chapter of this thesis is assessing the clarity of message communication of Consumer Confidence Reports (CCRs). In 1998, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) mandated that community water systems (CWSs) provide annual water quality reports to their consumers. These CCRs summarize information regarding water sources, any detected contaminants, compliance with federal regulations, and educational information. Thirty CCRs across all ten USEPA regions were analyzed for clarity using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Clear Communication Index (CCI) tool. The analysis of these CCRs was a national representation of CWSs and revealed that currently distributed CCRs performed poorly on the CDC's CCI—all failing to meet the 90% passing mark. The overall average score for all CCRs was 50.3 ± 13.5%. The clarity scores were based on seven key areas: 1) Main message and call to action; 2) Language; 3) Information design; 4) State of the science; 5) Behavioral recommendations; 6) Numbers; and 7) Risk. Improvements in all seven areas—with the lowest average scores at 3.3 ± 18.1%, 21.7 ± 26.6%, and 37.7 ± 27.1%, respectively, for state of science, language, and main message and call to action—of the CCI will greatly improve the quality and educational capabilities of CCRs. The failing scores highlight the challenges facing CWSs in communicating water quality information. This assessment can serve as a tool for water utilities to effectively prepare and distribute information to their consumers in the future. CWSs must promote a two-way dialogue with their consumers. They should address consumer's concerns and wants in the CCRs, and they should also effectively communicate risks to the consumers so that they are not under the misconception that their water is unsafe to drink. CWSs should use the CCRs as a way to educate the public and promote drinking tap water. The last chapter of this thesis addresses the concerns that consumers may have about their drinking water and methods that could be implemented to quickly and efficiently respond to consumer complaints and contaminants with sensory properties. Just like CWSs, consumers are concerned about their water; they are the sentinels to water quality monitoring because they are uniquely positioned at the tap. Consumers are able to detect the slightest taste, odor, and appearance in their drinking water because it is well—instinctive! Thus, consumer feedback and complaint data provided to a utility should be taken seriously and stored for future comparisons. Any consumer complaint represents a fruitful data stream that should be harnessed routinely to gain knowledge about aesthetic water quality in the distribution system. Four utilities provided consumer complaints on water quality data that were categorized and visualized using radar and run-time plots. As a result, major taste, odor, and appearance patterns emerged that clarified the issue and could provide guidance to the utilities on the nature and extent of the problem. Consumer complaint data is valuable for water quality issue identification, but CWSs should understand that even though humans readily identify visual issues with water, such as color, cloudiness, or rust, describing specific tastes and particularly odors in drinking water is acknowledged to be a much more difficult task for humans to achieve without training. This was demonstrated with two utility groups, laboratory personnel and plant operators, and a group of consumers identifying the odor of orange, 2-MIB, and DMTS. All of the groups were able to identify the familiar orange odor. However, the two utility groups were much more able to identify the musty odor of 2-MIB; this may be due to the fact that the utility groups are more familiar with raw and finished water. DMTS, a garlic-onion odor associated with sulfur compounds in drinking water, was the least familiar to all three groups. The lab personnel group was the better describers of the odor, but the results within this group still varied significantly. These results suggest that utility personnel should be mindful of consumers who complain that their water is different, but cannot describe the problem. To reduce the inability to describe an odor or taste issue, a TandO program at a utility can be beneficial. The safety and aesthetic characteristics of drinking water is most important to consumers. They both complement each other; if consumers think their water tastes funny, they would probably assume that is unsafe to drink. Since nZVI is increasingly being introduced into the drinking water supply, researchers must be able to understand how it reacts in humans and the environment. Additionally, CCRs would be an effective method for CWSs to communicate water quality information and address any concerns consumers may have about their water. CWSs can use implement the radar and run-time plots to identify issues in the drinking water systems. Also, TandO programs will allow CWSs and their consumers to better describe and identify the issues in their drinking water as it arises so that it can be easily addressed and alleviated. Thus, promoting communication between water utilities and their consumers will improve the relationship and instill confidence in consumers about their drinking water. / Master of Science

Yes / We assess the impact of investor sentiment on future stock returns in 50 global stock markets. Using the consumer confidence index (CCI) as the sentiment proxy, we document a negative relationship between investor sentiment and future stock returns at the global level. While the separation between developed and emerging markets does not disrupt the negative pattern, investor sentiment has a more instant impact in emerging markets, but a more enduring impact in developed markets. Individual stock markets reveal heterogeneity in the sentiment-return relationship. This heterogeneity can be explained by cross-market differences in culture and institutions, along with intelligence and education, to varying degrees influenced by the extent of individual investor market participation.

With economic uncertainties on the rise, understanding the relationship between consumer price inflation and consumer confidence becomes increasingly vital. This thesis investigates the relationship between Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) and Consumer confidence, specifically within the context of Sweden. The relationship is examined through the Vector Autoregression (VAR) model, spanning from the period 2002 to 2023. Drawing upon existing literature and theoretical frameworks in economics and psychology, this research provides a deeper understanding of the relationship between the two variables. By incorporating data up to 2023, this thesis will also examine the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the relationship between these key macroeconomic indicators. The results show statistically significant evidence that consumer price inflation predicts consumer confidence. Thus, we conclude that consumer price inflation plays a significant role in the dynamics of consumer confidence, influencing both economic conditions and expectations.