What You Eat Is What You Are: Risk Attitudes, Time Preferences, and Diet Quality

Emmanuel Paroissien (PSAE) joint with Antoine Nebout (PSAE), Noemi Berlin (U. Paris Nanterre) and Emmanuel Kemel (HEC Paris)

This paper explores the relationships between overall diet quality and attitudes toward risk and time using a general population survey. Our survey combines a state-of-the-art food frequency questionnaire and a novel choice-based preference module to elicit individual risk and time preferences. The online questionnaire was administered to a socio-economic panel representative of the French population. Using a hierarchical Bayes framework, we jointly estimate individual risk aversion and impatience parameters. We show that risk and time preferences significantly influence individual heterogeneity in critical aspects of diet quality and provide evidence supporting underlying mechanisms.