Combating foodborne disease through household food handling behavior improvement: A comparison between education and price interventions

Foodborne disease cases are increasingly occurring in home kitchens because of improper food handling behavior. Human factors are considered major determinants of such behavior, although economic factors, which have attracted little attention, may also be important influencers. Taking the service time of kitchen towels as an example, we construct a theoretical model to analyze food handling behavior under an economic framework and empirically explore its economic determinants. Empirically, we use a randomized controlled trial (RCT) coupled with pre- and postsurveys in rural China. The RCT intervention includes information with tips for proper kitchen towel use and in-kind subsidies of one, two, or three packs of kitchen towels, which is regarded as a price intervention. We find that information alone and information plus one pack of towels are not enough to stimulate behavior improvement, whereas information plus two or three packs is sufficient. This implies that the quantity of kitchen towels used increases only as the towel price drops below a certain threshold. As an early attempt, we indicate that food handling behavior is economically driven, suggesting that a well-designed policy should combine educational campaigns and appropriate economic incentives to improve such behavior to reduce the risk of foodborne disease.