Vol 10, No 2-3 (2016)
Issue Description
This issue of Apstract entitled Contributions to the understanding of issues with respect to behaviour,
food, happiness and health is a special one. It consists of contributions on topics and the way of research
that have been or are going on at the ECH group since Gerrit Antonides became the chair holder in 2002
and his retirement in October 2016. This issue can be regarded as a Festschrift for him.
This particular issue gives an impression of topics and kind of research in the 2002-2016 period. In this
way, it can be seen as pattern-card of the research of the group. There is great variety in the contributions
in many respects. There are contributions from past and present ECH colleagues. There are contributions
from other colleagues with whom Gerrit Antonides has co-operated for a long time.
There are contributions that give an impression of the kind of research work in BSc and MSc theses and
there are papers from past and present PhD students. Some papers are highly empirical, whereas others
are more of a theoretical nature. Some are rigorously empirical, others are essayistic publications that
give an overview of the stat. . .
This issue of Apstract entitled Contributions to the understanding of issues with respect to behaviour,
food, happiness and health is a special one. It consists of contributions on topics and the way of research
that have been or are going on at the ECH group since Gerrit Antonides became the chair holder in 2002
and his retirement in October 2016. This issue can be regarded as a Festschrift for him.
This particular issue gives an impression of topics and kind of research in the 2002-2016 period. In this
way, it can be seen as pattern-card of the research of the group. There is great variety in the contributions
in many respects. There are contributions from past and present ECH colleagues. There are contributions
from other colleagues with whom Gerrit Antonides has co-operated for a long time.
There are contributions that give an impression of the kind of research work in BSc and MSc theses and
there are papers from past and present PhD students. Some papers are highly empirical, whereas others
are more of a theoretical nature. Some are rigorously empirical, others are essayistic publications that
give an overview of the state of art in a particular field of research. Many papers address issues from a
Behavourial Economics point of view. After all Gerrit Antonides is an internationally known specialist
is this field. He was editor of the Journal of Economic Psychology , and president and currently board
member of SABE. And, not the least, the contributions are very international in many respects.
The fifteen contributions are organised around four themes: Behaviour; Food; Allergy; and Happiness.
The Section Behaviour consists of six contributions. In the first article, Jack Knetsch provides an account
of Willingness To Pay (WTP) and Willingness To Accept (WTA) as two ways to measure the value of
(policy) options that lead to very different valuations. He proceeds to discuss that WTA is frequently
the more appropriate measure where WTP is routinely used. He identifies several fields in which the
differences between WTP and WTA are important and understudied.
The second article, by Manon de Groot and Fred van Raaij, deals with whether and how self-employed
entrepreneurs manage their finances. More specifically, they investigate the role of mental budgeting and
time orientation in healthy financial behaviour. They show that mental budgeting relates to worry about
one’s financial situation, but is not related to tax compliance.
The third article, by Natasha Stroeker, provides an account of the establishment and growing influence of
behavioural economics on Dutch government policy. In an interesting twist, she then suggests the use of
nudges to increase the integration of behavioural science knowledge in policy and describes how nudges
can be embedded in policy.
The fourth article, by Anouk Griffioen, Jannette van Beek, Simone Lindhout and Michel Handgraaf, gives an
overview of studies that investigate psychological distance as an important variable that affects perceptions,
intentions, and decision making in the environmental and health domains. They argue that differences
in the effect of psychological distance can be found between studies and constructs (e.g., perceptions vs.
intentions vs. behaviour) rather than between domains or between the psychological distance dimensions.
In addition, they discuss potential underlying mechanisms and identify topics for future research.
In the fifth article, Rein Haagsma and Pierre van Mouche analyse studies that investigate the endowment
effect using a standard choice paradigm (which they term the standard apple-Mars experiment) from
behavioural economics. They argue that, despite the claim in the literature that neoclassical theory cannot
explain the endowment effect, it is actually possible to use (a Marshallian application of) neoclassical
theory to explain these standard findings, in particular in cases where consumer indifference between
the options cannot be ruled out.
In the sixth article, Ynte van Dam and Hans van Trijp delve into the discrepancy between consumers’
attitudes and actual sustainable behaviour. They argue that for intrinsically motivated consumers, this gap is
fairly easily overcome and that the challenge lies with a-motivated individuals who need extrinsic motivation
to behave sustainably. Psychological construal level theory is used as an explanation for the attitude to
behaviour gap as a motivational conflict between high and low level of mental construal. They examine
four types of intervention strategies that can cater for extrinsic motivation for sustainable development.
In the Section Food there are four contributions. In her article, titled ‘Food and nutrition security as gendered
social practice’, Anke Niehof emphasizes the necessity of women empowerment to assure household food
security and good nutrition of children in developing countries. In her opinion that does not mean that
women are completely without power. However, improved access to critical resources would improve
their household food security and their children’s nutrition. Somewhat contradictory to this conclusion is
the observation that, except for south east Asia, the existing gender inequalities do not visibly result in a
gender gap in nutrition.
In ‘Women and microcredit in rural agrarian households of Uganda: Match or mismatch between lender
and borrower?’ Faith Namayengo , Johan van Ophem and Gerrit Antonides show that micro-finance can
play a major role in small enterprises in developing countries. They investigated the extent to which the
objectives and design of a specific micro-finance program (the BRAC program) match the expectations,
context and characteristics of female borrowers in a rural agrarian setting in Uganda. The clients are mainly
poor subsistence farmers who derive income from diverse farming and non-farm activities. The microcredit
is mainly used to pay school fees and investments in small non-farm businesses. The result of the
investigation was that the majority of borrowers was satisfied with the program and that the defaulting on
loans was quite low. Finally, we may conclude that the program contributes to wellbeing of the borrowers.
The research question in ‘The added value of sustainability motivations in understanding sustainable food
choices’ by Muriel Verain, Marleen Onwezen, Siet Sijtsema and Hans Dagevos is whether sustainability
motivations contribute to sustainable food choices. The results indicate that process or sustainability motives
are of added value above product motives in the understanding of consumer food choices. This paper
shows that the understanding of sustainable consumption can be improved by considering sustainability
motives apart from product motives. Further, it is important to take the sustainability dimension (e.g.,
fair trade versus environment) and the product category (e.g., meat versus fruit) into account. All in all
a most useful extension of the theory on consumer choices.
Lynn Frewer, David Coles, A.M. Dijkstra, S. Kuznesof, H. Kendall, and G. Kaptan discuss in their
paper ‘Synthetic biology applied in the agrifood sector: societal priorities and pitfalls’ several issues in
this area. Synthetic biology offers potential for innovation in the agrifood sector, although concerns have
been raised consumer rejection of applications will occur similar to that associated with the introduction
of genetically modified foods. Risk-benefit assessment should address socio-economic, as well as health
and environmental impacts. Ethical issues may be of particular relevance to the application synthetic
biology, and may also resonate with societal concerns. A case-by-case analysis of relevant issues may
be needed, and innovation must be driven by societal and consumer preferences as well as technological
possibilities. Research into consumer and societal priorities is required early in the innovation trajectory.
The Section Allergy starts with a review of the literature by Prescilla V. Jeurink, Athanasios Damiali, Harry
Wichers, and Huub F.J. Savelkoul in their contribution ‘The mutual influences of man-made pollutants
and allergic manifestations’. The review provides an overview of the different types of pollution, and the
health effects triggered by especially air pollution ranging from heart disease, pulmonary disease, cancer,
to fatal respiratory infections. In addition, the differences in how pollution-induced effects are affecting
different age-groups are discussed. Finally, the socio-economic causes and consequences (e.g. Quality of
Life and Years of Life Losses versus medical care cost) of these pollution-induced diseases are debated.
Jantine Voordouw and her co-authors - Gerrit Antonides, Margaret Fox, Inma Cerecedo, Javier Zamora,
Belen de la Hoz Caballer, Ewa Rokicka, Judith R. Cornelisse-Vermaat, Maciej Jewczak, Pawel Starosta,
Marek Kowalski, Monika Jędrzejczak-Czechowicz, Sonia Vázquez-Cortes, Sara Cano-Escudero, Bertine
M.J. Flokstra-De Blok, Anthony E.J. Dubois, Miranda Mugford, Lynn J. Frewer - assess ‘The direct and
indirect costs associated with food hypersensitivity in households: A study in the Netherlands, Poland, and
Spain’. A self-administered postal survey was conducted (n=1558) in three counties with a treatment and
a control group. It appears that the average total direct and indirect costs across all countries for families
with food hypersensitive family members are not higher than for households without food hypersensitive
members. However, the intangible costs for food hypersensitive individuals appear to be higher than for
individuals in the control group. The results do not support the hypothesis that all food allergies incur
high costs to the individual. However, being hypersensitive to foods may have a negative impact on quality
of life compared to people who are not food hypersensitive
The Section Happiness contains three papers. In their contribution ‘Transition economy and happiness:
the Czech Republic compared with The Netherlands in the 1990- 2004 period’ Johan van Ophem, Vit
Kohout and Wim Heijman analyse the relationship between income and happiness in the Czech Republic,
a (former) transition economy, and the Netherlands. They conclude that in the beginning of the nineties,
in the period after the great change of the economic system, the Czechs were less happy than the Dutch.
Further, they found that the happiness of the Czechs has been gradually increasing and is approaching the
level of happiness of the Dutch in more recent times, which can be related to a decreasing gap in income
and other relevant variables. In both countries happiness is positively affected by subjective health status,
perceived freedom of choice over life, being married or living together and satisfaction with one’s financial
situation and having trust in social institutions.
In ‘A note on the measurement of the relationship between happiness and GDP’ Wim Heijman, Johan
van Ophem and Job van Logtestijn compare the results of the measurement of the relationship between
happiness and GDP in the EU based upon ‘unweighted data’ with results based upon ‘weighted data’
which are supposed to present a more realistic picture of this relationship. It appears that the latter way
of measurement shows an even stronger relationship between GDP and happiness than the former.
Morris Altman addresses several issues on the diminishing returns relationship between happiness and
income in his contribution ‘Is there a kink in the happiness literature’. Appling some of the results of
prospect theory Altman argues that even if it were true that the marginal effect of income on happiness is
zero, a reduction in income would probably reduce the level of happiness, yielding a kink in the ‘happiness
curve’. Also, applying a target income approach to the happiness literature, one can argue that pursuing
higher target income, in itself, is a means of increasing life satisfaction.
In addition, applying insights from the capabilities approach, Altman argues that increasing income is a
means of purchasing the capabilities to increase individual levels of happiness through the production of
public goods, such as health care and education.