Given the large number of choices that consumers make each day it seems likely that they will generally adopt decision strategies that minimize cognitive effort, particularly with low price products such as most items found in a supermarket. One such strategy may be to simply choose what has...

This report summarizes a series of projects undertaken by staff and students in the Department of Rural Economy which examine various socio-economic aspects of chronic wasting disease and its effect on a range of stakeholders in Alberta. The four projects included exploring impacts on the cervid...

An important element of resource management and conservation is an understanding of the tradeoffs between marketed products such as timber and measures of environmental quality such as biodiversity. In this paper, we develop an integrated economic – ecological spatial optimization model. The...

The effective management of water resources in Alberta is crucial to sustainable agriculture, industrial development, and environmental management. The historical water allocation mechanism, administrative apportionment, has been viewed in recent years as ineffective and cumbersome. Accordingly,...

Consumers' attitudes to genetically modified (GM) food ingredients and their reactions to and preferences for labeling of GM food are topical issues for Canadian food policy and are the subjects of this study. This project included several components. The first of these was an assessment of...

We assess Canadian’s risk perceptions for genetically modified (GM) food and probe influences of socio-economic, demographic and other factors impinging on these perceptions. An internet-administered questionnaire with two stated choice split-sample experiments that approximate market choices...

Public concern regarding food safety has emerged as a major policy issue. Chemicals and biotechnological processes are perceived as risks of food safety despite their contribution to an efficient, low cost agriculture and food industry. Increases in uses of biotechnological processes for foods...

The psychology, the marketing consumer behavior and, to a much smaller extent, the economics literature have long reported evidence that decision makers utilize different decision strategies depending upon many factors (person-specific, task-specific, etc.). Such observations have generally...