The impact of communicating conflicting risk and benefit messages: An experimental study on red meat information

•Communicating risk and benefit messages lead to perceptions of inferred conflict.•A newer benefit message leads an original risk message to be judged as less credible.•A non-trusted third-party communicator impacts credibility of an official message.•Future research should investigate heuristics used to appraise conflicting messages.

Health risk and benefit messages that pertain to the same food may leave consumers unsure about the health consequences and advisability of consuming the food where conflict is inferred between the risk and benefit messages. A 2 × 2 between-subjects vignette study was carried out to investigate how food consumers from eight European countries (N = 803) appraised conflicting risk and benefit messages and whether the trustworthiness of a third-party communicator through which a conflicting message is received moderated appraisals of this information. We also investigated whether appraisals were subject to cross-cultural variation based on cultural levels of uncertainty avoidance. Communication of a conflicting message outlining the benefits of red meat led to decreased credibility being attributed to the original risk message compared to when a second confirmatory risk message was communicated. Evaluation of the new information was not impacted by any apparent conflict with the original risk message; however, the third-party communicating the new message did impact the credibility of this new information. These effects were not subject to cultural variation. Further understanding on the strategies employed by consumers to evaluate conflicting food-related risk and benefit messages is discussed.