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COULD OBESITY BE CONTAGIOUS? SOCIAL INFLUENCE, FOOD CONSUMPTION BEHAVIOR, AND BODY WEIGHT OUTCOMES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 March 2019

Nathalie Mathieu-Bolh
Nathalie Mathieu-Bolh*
Affiliation:
University of Vermont
*
Address correspondence to: Nathalie Mathieu-Bolh, University of Vermont, Department of Economics, Old Mill 94 University Place, Burlington, VT 05405, USA. e-mail: nmathieu@uvm.edu. Phone: 1 (802) 656 0946. Fax: 1 (802) 656 8405.
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Abstract

This paper contributes to explaining the obesity epidemic and finding a potential remedy. We build a theoretical model of food consumption decisions that accounts for social influence. In our model, individuals’ rationality is affected by an endogenous social weight norm, which influences their calorie consciousness and perceived survival chances. Individuals are conformist, and the degree of conformism describes the extent to which individuals’ discounted utility is influenced by the social weight norm. With an endogenous social weight norm reflecting a heavier and heavier average body weight, we show that a high degree of conformism to the social norm could explain the obesity epidemic. In this environment, a government intervention decreasing energy density is ineffective at reducing steady-state body weight. This result could explain why this type of government dietary intervention seems to have had no effect on obesity, and suggests that the same type of intervention through the Food Stamps Program would be ineffective on its own. We also find that in the steady state, individuals can be overweight or underweight depending on their degree of conformism relative to the education they receive about the healthy weight. While education programs focusing on either diet or exercise have had moderate success, we show that focusing on healthy weight education could combat social influence and reduce obesity.

Keywords

ObesityStatusRationalityDietary InterventionsEducationSocial NormsFood Consumption BehaviorBody Weight
Type
Articles
Information
Macroeconomic Dynamics , Volume 24 , Issue 8 , December 2020 , pp. 1924 - 1959
Copyright
© 2019 Cambridge University Press

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