食品購買時の提示情報量と消費者の選択行動

トレーサビリティ・システムにおける情報提供をめぐって

抄録

Recently, with the social requirement, traceability systems come into use for recognition of thehistory or origin of the food product. However, there remain important problems: what and how muchinformation should be supplied to consumers. Some people argue that the information should beoffered as much and detailed as possible. Others suggest that because a deluge of information is notdesirable, we should sort out or summarize the information and then provide to consumers.
In this paper, for inquiring the desirable quantity of information with traceability systems, weanalyze the consumers' ability of processing information by using discrete choice models. Throughthe experiment by increasing the quantity of information, two interesting results are obtained. First, we identify the point at which the effect of information overload occurs. The result shows thatinformation entropy indexes are lowest at 6 attributes and become higher at more than 6 attributes.
These imply that information overload effect appears around 6 attributes. Second, “knowledge” and“product involvement” are found to be dep ressant factors of information overload. People who havehigh knowledge or high involvement have relatively low entropy index.
From these findings, we can argue that to provide too much information to consumers isproblematic because it makes consumers confuse. To avoid this, we should select what is importantinformation for them. It is also important to offer an appropriate education and enlightenment inorder to heighten their knowledge and involvement.