Change Behavior: Tax Works Better Than Subsidy
The Science of Willpower Blog has an interesting post on behavior change. They review research that reveals:
Slapping a tax on unhealthy foods improves eating habits more effectively than making healthy foods cheaper.
Making food cheaper just means we buy more of the good stuff, we don’t stop buying the bad stuff. What the study found was:
“Give someone a fresh vegetable, and they’ll add it into their existing diet. But it’s not going to replace the french fries. And we’ve seen in other cases — taxing cigarettes, rising gasoline prices — that higher prices really can change habits.”
The questions is why does increasing prices work better? One insight offered in the post is – taxes tend to make us mad and that might interfere with the craving or compulsion that drives the bad habit. It could be more about the negative mental energy that is generated than the economic logic.
