Welfare effects of nudges: The emotional tax of calorie menu labeling

Traditionally, information has been assumed to never harm consumers, a notion recently challenged. Salience nudges have been argued to evoke negative emotions, therefore acting as “emotional taxes”. I design a hypothetical restaurant meal experiment to analyze the emotional and short-term consumer welfare impact of a calorie salience nudge (calorie menu labeling) – a policy implemented nationwide in the U.S. in 2018. I find that a calorie...