Food consumption and stigmatization under COVID‐19: Evidence from Chinese consumers' aversion to Wuhan hot instant noodles - Wiley

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1 INTRODUCTION

The food supply chain has suffered during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic, from consumer stockpiling and panic buying (Hao et al., 2020; Wang & Hao, 2020), concentrated outbreaks in meat processing plants (Middleton et al., 2020), and stigma (Corbet et al., 2020). Stigma is “an unwarranted level of avoidance behavior” (Walkers, 2001) mostly reflected in products whose names are related to the virus, such as Corona beer. Food is the most vulnerable commodity being affected by stigma (Hoffman et al., 2014). Although there are many studies on food stigma (such as Kecinski et al., 2018; Ellen and Bone et al., 2008; Mather et al., 2012), no research in the context of COVID‐19 has been conducted so far.

In this study, we followed Ellen and Bone (2008) definition of stigma as “a mark that is perceived negatively, considered deviant and undesirable, and associated with inflated risk perceptions.” Stigma can significantly affect marketplace efficiency by reducing the demand for a stigmatized product or service or by inflating demand for products or services that do not have a stigmatizing mark (Ellen & Bone, 2008). Furthermore, it is a social phenomenon that negatively impacts a certain group of people without a solid basis.

Coronavirus was first observed in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019. It disrupted the food supply chain from consumption to production (Corbet et al., 2020; Middleton et al., 2020). Wuhan hot instant noodles (WHINs) is the popular packaged reganmian, a traditional Chinese noodle dish originating from Wuhan and consumed nationwide. This inexpensive and simple dish has been a 50‐year‐old tradition in Wuhan and widely consumed even as street food. Since WHIN's name and origin signify Wuhan, the epicenter of the pandemic, there are many anecdotal reports that consumers have avoided WHIN following the outbreak of the disease, even though no evidence has been found that the product carries the virus or maybe hazardous. Media reported that WHIN was the only product left on grocery store shelves, while other instant noodles were bought up during the food rush in many cities, making WHIN a good candidate for the COVID‐19 food consumption stigma study (Meishike, 2020).

According to social identity theory, the social class that people belong to is an important source of pride and self‐esteem, and intergroup discrimination is motivated by individuals' desire to achieve and maintain positive self‐esteem (Tajfel et al., 1979). Discrimination against Wuhan may transmit to their discrimination against WHIN. The lower a person's social class, the higher the need for them to achieve self‐esteem from discrimination against Wuhan, which is colored by WHIN. Thus, an aversion to WHIN indicates stigmatization against Wuhan. In this paper, we conduct an empirical study using WHIN as the product to examine the stigmatization issue.

Food stigma issues are imperative in the context of COVID‐19 for many reasons. Specifically, the research on WHIN food stigma is relevant in at least two aspects. First, the connection of the name of the product to the original location of the outbreak provides a unique opportunity for the analysis of the stigma caused by its name instead of its contents or production process. Some financial market research shows that companies related to the term “corona” experienced abnormal losses and sustained periods of trading volatility (Corbet et al., 2020); however, no research has been conducted on food‐related issues in this context. Second, unlike Corona beer, WHIN stigma serves as a proxy for discrimination against food producers and handlers from Wuhan, which may be affected by COVID‐19 in general (Hoffman et al., 2014). Understanding the prevalence of food consumption stigma and factors influencing it can help the industry and government find tools for mitigation. To bridge this gap, we conduct an empirical study using WHIN as a case study.

2 DATA AND METHODS

Coronavirus spreads mainly person‐to‐person (CDC, 2020), and the probability of WHIN carrying the virus is near zero, similar to other processed instant noodles. Thus, stigmatization can be identified if WHIN consumers show an aversion to WHIN and claim Wuhan as their reason to avoid it.

An online survey of WHIN consumers, guaranteed by a screening question, was conducted in three Chinese topline cities, Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, in February 2020, during the COVID‐19 outbreak in these cities. These three cities are trendsetters in China and are the largest consumers of WHIN outside Wuhan, making them ideal for consumer behavior analysis. Many food‐consumer behavior studies use these three cities as the basis for empirical samples (Wang et al., 2018; Zheng et al., 2020). A credible online survey company collected 540 samples.

The variables used in this study are listed in Table 1 with their descriptive statistics. We asked each participant to choose whether they would be willing to purchase WHIN, and if yes, whether less or more than before the pandemic, when the prices of all instant noodles are assumed to be the same as before the pandemic. If the answer was no or yes and less, they were categorized as WHIN averting. We further provided a few options for the averters to choose from: (1) possibly unsafe, should avoid Wuhan; (2) we eat less these days; (3) it does not taste right; and (4) if other reasons, please tell us. Respondents are further categorized as averters who hold a stigmatization attitude if they chose the first reason.

Table 1. Survey questions and variable explanation (sample size = 540)

Variable Name	Description	Mean	Standard deviation
Dependent variables
Averting	=1 if not willing to purchase as much WHIN as before; =0 otherwise	0.28	0.19
Stigmatization	=1 if the reason for averting WHIN is he/she wants to avoid Wuhan; =0 otherwise	0.21	0.18
Treatment variables (control group as a base)
Infor1	Chances of WHIN carrying coronavirus is nearly zero	0.33	0.02
Infor2	Not all WHINs are made in Wuhan. The WHINs in this store are made outside Wuhan	0.33	0.02
Psychological variables
Badpsystat	=1 if self‐assessed psychological state is not good, =0 otherwise	0.53	0.22
Collectivist	To what degree one agrees with “in most cases, people have the same standard for what is right or wrong,” from 1 to 5, with 5 being highly agree	4.10	0.04
WuhanAvert	=1 if agree with “Even after 14‐day quarantine, people who had been to Wuhan should stay away from other people,” =0 otherwise	0.78	0.02
Other control variables
Neednoodle	=1 if needs instant noodle, =0 otherwise	0.26	0.02
Mclass	=1 if the self‐assessed social class is middle, =0 otherwise	0.66	0.02
Hclass	=1 if the self‐assessed social class is high, =0 otherwise	0.22	0.02
Hubeiexperi	=1 if ever been to Hubei province, =0 otherwise	0.14	0.02
Noconfirmed	=1 if neither a relative, a close friend, or self is confirmed nor suspected infected, =0 otherwise	0.43	0.02
ImpactIncI	=1 if income is increased by the pandemic, =0 otherwise	0.03	0.17
ImpactIncR	=1 if income is reduced by the pandemic, =0 otherwise	0.83	0.38
Doctor	=1 if himself/herself or a family member or close friend is a doctor, =0 otherwise	0.43	0.50
Demographic variables
Male	=1 if male; =0 if female	0.50	0.50
Education	Years of schooling	16	1.72
Medcareer	=1 if a profession in medical‐related fields, =0 otherwise	0.06	0.24
Income	Family annual income (thousand Yuan)	167.5	3.01
Shanghai	=1 if living in Shanghai, =0 otherwise	0.33	0.47
Guangzhou	=1 if living in Guangzhou, =0 otherwise	0.33	0.47
Age	Years of age	31.6	7.21

• Abbreviation: WHIN, Wuhan hot instant noodles.

To separate the motivation from the misperception of health risks, we used two randomly controlled treatment groups, with information “Chances for WHIN in stores carrying coronavirus is nearly zero because of the long period between production and point‐of‐sale” given to Group 1 and “Not all WHIN is made in Wuhan, and the WHIN in this case is made outside Wuhan” to Group 2.

Since stigma is driven by strong emotions and culture (Shulze & Wansin, 2012), we also questioned respondents’ attitudes toward people from Wuhan after the COVID‐19 breakout, WuhanAvert; their societal behavior attitude, Collectivist; their self‐assessed psychological state, Badpsystat; and their self‐identified social class, Mclass and Hclass. Other variables include whether they need instant noodles, Neednoodle; their personal experience in Hubei province of which Wuhan is the capital city, Hubeiexperi; income affected by the pandemic; whether anybody in their family or close friends was confirmed to be infected, No confirmed, ImpactincI, and ImpactInR; whether they, a family member, or close friend was a medical doctor, Doctor, and demographic factors.1 These variables are explained in Table 1.

We use the Probit model to explore the impact of the factors on WHIN averting and stigmatization behaviors

where Y is the dependent variable that takes values 0 and 1, is the cumulative density function of the standard normal distribution, x is the vector of explanatory variables, and is the corresponding coefficient vector. A positive coefficient implies that the corresponding factor would contribute to an increase in the probability that Y takes a value of 1.

3 RESULTS

Count data of averting consumption and stigmatization across the treatment and control groups are listed in Table 2. The respondents, who are 155 or 28.7% of the sample, are not willing to purchase as much WHIN as before. One hundred and fourteen of these 155 respondents, or 21.1% of the sample, claim that the reason for their WHIN aversion is that they want to avoid Wuhan, suggesting stigmatization.

Table 2. Averting consumption and stigmatization counts

	Control group	Treatment Group 1	Treatment Group 2	All
No averting	127	127	131	385
Averting	53	53	49	155
In which, stigmatization	39	38	37	114
Total	180	180	180	540

According to the T‐test, neither the percentage of consumers not willing to purchase WHIN nor those whose unwillingness is rooted in the stigmatization against Wuhan between the Inforgroup2 and Inforgroup1/control groups were statistically different from each other at 10%. This can be explained by the fact that no more than 30% of the population averted consumption of WHIN, and information treatments are supposed to be effective only among the population that holds negative attitudes towards WHIN or Wuhan.

To explore factors contributing to these averting behaviors, Probit regressions are performed. The dependent variables represent respondents’ averting and stigmatization behaviors of both completely stopping or reducing purchasing WHIN.2

All four models shown in Table 3 have very significant loglikelihood, indicating that the selected factors explain the behaviors. The information treatment variables are statistically insignificant when they do not interact with other variables. This indicates that the treatments are not effective. The positive significant coefficients of WuhanAvert in the two regressions suggest that the averting attitudes toward Wuhan people and WHIN are linked, supporting the stigma‐induced averting consumption hypothesis. However, after adding interaction terms, Infor2 (i.e., WHIN is not produced in Wuhan) shows a negative significance in stigmatization regressions, and Infor1 (i.e., WHIN does not carry the virus) is not effective. This suggests that consumers who show WHIN‐averting behaviors will have their concerns about health risks relieved by the clarification that products are not from Wuhan. At the same time, the scientific‐educational message that Wuhan‐produced products do not carry the virus is not effective in mitigating their concerns, which reinforces the fact that stigma is emotional and not easily solved by rational educational messages. The interaction terms of Infor2 and WuhanAverting are positively significant in column (4). This suggests that if WHIN is not made in Wuhan, consumers who do not avert Wuhan regain their willingness to purchase WHIN, but the information treatment is not effective for those predetermined to avert healthy Wuhan people, which reinforces the fact that stigma is irrational. This is also consistent with the stigma literature that stigma is caused more by emotions than by rationality (Ito & Kuriyama, 2017; Kanter et al., 2009; Kecinsk et al., 2018; Kecinsk & Messer, 2018; Shimokawa et al., 2018).

Table 3. Probit model regression results

Variables	Averting without interaction	With interaction	Stigmatization without interaction	With interaction
Infor1	−0.076	−0.297	−0.073	−0.414
	(0.149)	(0.335)	(0.160)	(0.354)
Infor2	−0.032	−0.332	−0.069	−0.786a
	(0.146)	(0.363)	(0.157)	(0.439)
WuhanAvert	0.330b	0.122	0.315a	−0.055
	(0.160)	(0.272)	(0.174)	(0.284)
Infor1a WuhanAvert		0.274		0.422
		(0.378)		(0.400)
Infor2a WuhanAvert		0.364		0.844a
		(0.399)		(0.473)
Neednoodle	−0.082	−0.088	0.035	0.030
	(0.087)	(0.087)	(0.093)	(0.094)
Mclass	−0.420b	−0.435b	−0.337a	−0.361a
	(0.192)	(0.193)	(0.199)	(0.200)
Hclass	−0.662c	−0.665c	−0.841c	−0.848c
	(0.228)	(0.229)	(0.249)	(0.250)
Income	−0.000	−0.000	−0.000	−0.001
	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)	(0.001)
Collectivist	0.070	0.073	0.075	0.078
	(0.051)	(0.052)	(0.054)	(0.055)
Noconfirmed	−0.016	−0.010	0.025	0.031
	(0.126)	(0.127)	(0.135)	(0.136)
ImpactIncI	−0.344	−0.369	−0.247	−0.294
	(0.487)	(0.490)	(0.501)	(0.507)
ImpactIncR	0.078	0.067	−0.079	−0.091
	(0.183)	(0.185)	(0.188)	(0.191)
Shanghai	−0.019	−0.014	0.153	0.158
	(0.148)	(0.149)	(0.158)	(0.159)
Guangzhou	−0.115	−0.117	−0.001	−0.009
	(0.152)	(0.152)	(0.165)	(0.166)
Age	0.011	0.011	0.023b	0.022b
	(0.009)	(0.009)	(0.009)	(0.009)
Edu	0.046	0.046	0.038	0.039
	(0.039)	(0.039)	(0.041)	(0.041)
Close	0.433	0.456	0.450	0.481
	(0.352)	(0.354)	(0.381)	(0.380)
Badpsystate	0.541c	0.541c	0.396c	0.392c
	(0.130)	(0.130)	(0.139)	(0.139)
Hubei_experi	0.260	0.265	0.245	0.255
	(0.193)	(0.193)	(0.206)	(0.207)
Male	−0.309b	−0.303b	−0.378c	−0.366c
	(0.125)	(0.125)	(0.133)	(0.134)
Doctor	−0.083	−0.083	0.066	0.068
	(0.136)	(0.136)	(0.145)	(0.146)
Medcareer	0.264	0.298	0.174	0.257
	(0.268)	(0.272)	(0.297)	(0.305)
_cons	−2.622c	−2.456b	−‐3.299c	−2.982c
	(0.955)	(0.967)	(1.017)	(1.025)
Loglikelihood	−299.207c	−298.743c	−254.135c	−252.415c

• Note: Standard errors are reported in ().
• ^a Coefficient estimates are statistically significant at 10% Levels.
• ^b Coefficient estimates are statistically significant at 5% levels.
• ^c Coefficient estimates are statistically significant at 1% levels.

Mclass (i.e., self‐identified as middle class) and Hclass (i.e., self‐identified as high class) are both significantly negative, and Hclass is more significant and has a higher magnitude than Mclass. Identifying as a lower social class may suggest lower self‐esteem, which indicates one being uncomfortable in society. This supports social identity theory that the higher the social class they feel they belong to, the lower the need for them to discriminate against the disadvantaged population, and, thus, the lower the likelihood for them to have stigmatization and averting behaviors against WHIN.

As to the control variables, Badpsystat is also significant in all regressions, further confirming the power that emotion affects stigmatization, as in the literature (Shulze & Wansink, 2012). Male is significantly negative, which is consistent with existing stigma literature. Age is significantly positive for stigmatization regressions, indicating that older people tend to stigmatize more.

4 CONCLUSION

Most studies on pandemic‐induced stigma are found in psychology and health; its economic impact studies are still limited, more so regarding COVID‐19 (Des Jarlais et al., 2006; Heijnders and Van Der Meij, 2006; Eichelberger, 2007). According to our research using Chinese WHIN as a case, averting food consumption comes from a misperception of risks and stigmatization, and the latter can be explained by factors such as emotion and social identity. Based on our results, simple scientific education is not effective for people who stigmatize. Moreover, consistent with the existing literature (Des Jarlais, 2006; Kecinsk et al., 2018), stigma is more emotional than rational, especially among people from lower self‐identified social class and displaying a poor psychological state. Psychological intervention programs may be considered by government and nongovernmental organizations to help the public during pandemics to prevent depression and reduce potential stigmatization.

For the food industry, although food hoarding and its subsequent waste seem to boost food demand during disasters, firms should be aware that stigmatization could be devastating for a particular product. A quick response to mitigate the impact is necessary. However, simply presenting factual interventions will only help rational consumers who do not know the facts, but not consumers who stigmatize. Firms may enlist government officials and celebrates to consume such safe food and show on media. Companies may also require a quick rebranding. However, rebranding often takes a long time, firms should have backup products and plans to prepare for potential shocks on regular basis. Meanwhile, authorities, especially government agencies for food, health, and commerce, should have the social responsibility to behave scientifically and release information promptly and counter stigmatization during natural disasters.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This study was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China 72003008 and Sugar Crops Research System (CARS‐170601).

Biographies

• Na Hao is an Assistant Professor at the School of Economics, Beijing Technology and Business University. She received her BS degree in economics from Nanjing Agricultural University, China, in 2008, and her Ph.D. degree in Agricultural Economics from the University of Georgia, USA, in 2015. Her recent research interests include consumer and producer preferences and behavior on food safety and quality attributes, and the online market.

• H. Holly Wang is a Professor at the Department of Agricultural Economics, Purdue University. She received her BS degree in management information science from Tsinghua University, China, in 1990, and her Ph.D. degree in agricultural economics from Michigan State University, USA, in 1996. Her recent research interests include consumer and producer preferences and behavior on food safety and quality attributes, and online market.

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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