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Neither agree nor disagree Advertising that serves to inform consumers has a positive effect; a world without any advertising seems clearly worse than the current world. However, the marginal advertisement may have a negative effect if it serves only to bring to mind consumption opportunities that people already know about and distracts attention from more valuable alternative uses of that attention. My conjectured answer to the question depends on what exactly it is asking. I am not aware of evidence on this question.
Professor Daniel Benjamin
Associate Professor of Economics, University of Southern California -
Agree Advertising can promote materialism, a correlate and predictor of lower wellbeing.
Professor Lara Aknin
Distinguished Professor of Social Psychology, Simon Fraser University -
Neither agree nor disagree Depending on multiple factors, including the business context, the nature of the product, the consumer, and how advertising is conducted, advertising can have both positive and negative effects on well-being. From a business perspective, successful advertising that increases revenue can contribute to well-being by supporting economic growth and business sustainability. From a consumer's perspective, informative advertising about useful products or services, especially those that meet genuine needs at reasonable prices, can enhance well-being by facilitating informed choices and improving quality of life. However, advertising that primarily encourages unnecessary consumption, promotes consumerism, or functions as intrusive spam can negatively impact well-being. Overall, it is difficult to generalize the net effect of advertising on well-being. Its impact varies according to many factors.
Professor Mohsen Joshanloo
Associate Professor (Psychology), Keimyung University, South Korea -
Agree The amount of time our attention is focused on advertising could be better spent focusing on the main pathways to building wellbeing - connecting with others, savouring the natural environment, contemplating purpose etc...
Professor Aaron Jarden
Associate professor, Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne -
Agree This is a tough question since advertising is so deeply part of our way of life. Everyone is selling themselves to the rest of the world, whether that is on the marriage market or in the job market. Our economic and social system would collapse without advertising and so in that sense is a necessary ingredient for the wellbeing of society. However, on the margin I think there is now too much advertising. Commercial messages have polluted the common information space, such that the population has very low quality information on themselves, their families, their country, and the world. In general, less advertising (and particularly less pernicious advertising) would be better. Another way to say the same is that it would be good if truth was better funded and did not need to compete with the avalanche of nonsense advertising.
Professor Paul Frijters
Professorial Research Fellow, CEP Wellbeing Programme, London School of Economics -
Neither agree nor disagree Advertising comes in many forms. While advertising can often provide helpful information about the availability, the attributes, and the pricing of products and services, it can also be manipulative of people's preferences. The potential for manipulation is especially a concern for certain populations, such as youth, or those who are prone to addiction.
Professor Stephen Wu
Professor of Economics, Hamilton College -
Neither agree nor disagree Incomplete and asymmetric information is a major source of market failure with negative welfare (wellbeing) consequences. Responsible and informative advertising (including by public agencies) is one response to improving the amount, and reducing the degree of asymmetry in, information and in that respect is welfare-enhancing. However, a considerable amount of advertising is designed to create Veblen effects (i.e. a need to 'keep up with the Joneses') which reduces wellbeing as people feel relatively worse off through not consuming the latest product or brand. Thus advertising has both positive and negative effects.
Professor Arthur Grimes
Chair of Wellbeing and Public Policy, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington -
Neither agree nor disagree Advertising can have positive or negative effects on wellbeing. On the one hand, advertising can help inform people about the availability and prices of goods. This can help them make better choices. It can also increase competition, which benefits consumers and increases welfare overall. On the other hand, advertising can be used to increase product differentiation, which could lower competition and ultimately harm consumers. Advertising could also be used to manipulate people and distort their decisions. In imperfectly competitive markets (e.g. oligopolies), advertising could be a rent-seeking instrument to appropriate market share from competitors. In equilibrium, there will be excessive spending on advertising, which is then only a waste of resources to society.
Professor Andreas Knabe
Professor (Chair in Public Economics), Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg -
Agree Let's consider five impacts of corporations advertising their goods and services to individual consumers: (1) To promote one brand over a perfect substitute (competitive, zero-sum). (2) To increase awareness of the existence of a useful class of product to people who could benefit from it. (3) To bamboozle the population into higher levels of consumption, fueling general economic production and innovation. (4) To misinform the population about (or distort) the nature of what is good for their wellbeing, including creating or preying on insecurities, and encouraging competitive consumption, possibly leading to lesser emphasis on socially-oriented or other leisure time, or even collective values. (5) To support the existence of public goods such as newspapers or Internet search. In the modern world there are alternative means for disseminating and aggregating information about purchase and consumption options facing buyers. (Also likely true of public service announcement feeds). Therefore, regardless of where we might be had advertising been more restricted in the past, currently (1), which is a clear loss, as well as (2), should not count as positive effects. (5) is also no longer a sensible base model for web search, which has also largely ruined the model for other media. So the question is whether (4) is bad enough to overwhelm any positives associated with (3), but (3) could be good or bad and is, on the surface, immiserating growth. In sum, the informational benefit of advertising is outdated, and we are left with all the negative impacts.
Professor Chris Barrington-Leigh
Professor, McGill University -
Completely agree Advertising generates needs and wants that would not exist otherwise. Therefore, it increases the distance between what individuals have (owned or have achieved) and what they want/need. It is also true that informational advertising can have positive effects, as it provides information to take better consumption decisions. However, this is currently not the dominating type of advertisements. At this moment, the main goal seems to be to generate new needs.
Professor Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell
Professor of Economics, IAE-CSIC -
Neither agree nor disagree These are two major forces here pushing in opposite directions, and i do not feel confident gauging which is more powerful. On the one hand, advertising is an information-dissemination mechanism - it lets people know about things that they may not already be aware of - and this is a crucial pillar of functioning free markets, which are what we want if we want to maximise surplus and hence resources available to spend on wellbeing creation and maintenance. This is particularly true in today's world of information saturation and perceived time poverty: our attention is very limited, and general research skills and pro-active information search in the population are weak, and advertising can be one of the only ways to inform us. On the opposing side, much of what is pitched to us in ads will not be good for us. Consuming more and more is not the road to real happiness, and advertising may sell us things that we do not need with a side serving of messaging about the need for more consumption. Advertising is also easier to afford and implement for bigger market players, so it will disproportionately drive purchases that themselves drive further market concentration, which is on net bad for wellbeing.
Professor Gigi Foster
Professor, School of Economics, UNSW School of Economics -
Disagree The standard textbook response (or perhaps these days I should say, AI-generated response) is that advertising comes with both advantages and disadvantages. What the net effect is, is unclear to me, and I am not aware of any research that provides a clear answer (but I freely admit that this is not an area of research I have any familiarity with). I then asked myself: "What type of society would I prefer to live in: one where advertising was banned or one where there were few restrictions on advertising?" As a result, I opted for the "Disagree" option.
Professor Mark Wooden
Professorial Research Fellow and Director of the HILDA Survey Project, Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic and Social Research, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Melbourne -
Neither agree nor disagree Advertising increases human consumption. Increased consumption is particularly damaging for future well-being because it contributes to climate change and environmental degradation. Regarding current well-being, it has negative effects through several main channels: (1) advertising fosters materialistic values, which decrease subjective well-being by promoting misguided beliefs about what leads to happiness. (2) Greater consumption tends to push more people into debt; (3) Advertising makes people less satisfied with their current consumption and possessions due to increased opportunity costs. On the other hand, there are some positive channels: (1) By increasing consumption, advertising can drive economic growth. This effect is particularly valuable in developing economies with high unemployment, but is far less relevant in developed economies facing chronic labor shortages. (2) Advertising can encourage openness to new experiences, reduce search costs, and inform people about products or services that may enhance quality of life. Overall, empirical evidence is mixed: Griffith et al. (2023) find a positive association using a panel model that builds upon and improves the model of Michel et al. (2019), whose results instead indicate a net-negative effect on wellbeing. Michel, C., Sovinsky, M., Proto, E., & Oswald, A. J. (2019). Advertising as a major source of human dissatisfaction: Cross-national evidence on one million Europeans. In The Economics of Happiness: How the Easterlin Paradox Transformed Our Understanding of Well-Being and Progress (pp. 217-239). Cham: Springer International Publishing. Griffith, D. A., Lee, H. S., & Yalcinkaya, G. (2023). Understanding the relationship between advertising spending and happiness at the country level. Journal of International Business Studies, 54(1), 128-150.
Professor Martijn Hendriks
Associate Professor, Erasmus University Rotterdam & University of Johannesburg -
Agree Advertising might well be one of these social dilemma situations in that if all advertisers would advertise less intrusively, more honestly, everyone would be better off, but each individual advertiser has incentive to beat the competition by doing more. Given that people are not perfectly rational, they don't see necessarily through the misleading information, nudges and so forth and end up with things they would not need. Even if everybody were perfectly rational, we waste a lot of resources better used otherwise. And there might well be negative effects on those working in advertising as well: if you know you are peddling a useless/faulty product, you won't be very happy in your job (Graeber goes so far calling advertising a form of "bullshit" job which gnaws at your soul)
Professor Martin Binder
Professor of Socio-Economics at Bundeswehr University Munich -
Completely agree In the early debate on the effects of advertising on consumers’ wellbeing, John K. Galbraith (1958) argued for a negative effect on consumers through moulding their preferences, whereas Milton Friedman (1977) defended ‘free speech’ and relied on consumer sovereignty. Friedman criticized Galbraith for his lack of empirical support, but behavioral economics and recent evidence (eg Michel et al 2019) clearly placed Friedman on the wrong side. It remains to be specified how advertising moulds consumers’ preferences with a net negative effect. The most discussed channel is the instillation of harmful and addictive desires in consumers. This is especially evident in the case of children and young people. But I would add other two less investigated channels, which have become pervasive with the use of recent screen-based devices: the fragmentation of attention and the underestimation of the value of time. Modern advertising, along with videos, feeds, and posts, contributes significantly to fragmenting people's attention, reducing the productivity of their current activities. In fact, according to psychologists and neuroscientists, reasoning is a relatively slow process, and the human mind is not well-equipped for multitasking. Fragmented attention therefore hinders the achievement of goals, especially those that require effort. It hinders investment activities, such as studying, and instead encourages consumption activities, such as scrolling videos. People underestimate the value of time when they accept an unwanted commercial break while searching for something interesting. They don't seem to learn to exercise their "consumer sovereignty", while companies find it profitable to increase advertising. Underestimating time is once again a way to reduce investment activities, which would lead to long-term well-being. Friedman M (1977) Friedman on Galbraith. Vancouver: Fraser Institute. Galbraith JK (1958) The Affluent Society. Houghton Mifflin. Michel C, Sovinsky M, Proto E, Oswald AJ (2019) Advertising as a major source of human dissatisfaction. In M Rojas (Ed) The Economics of Happiness. Springer, pp.217–39
Professor Maurizio Pugno
Full Professor of Economics, University of Cassino -
Neither agree nor disagree Marketing has become a sophisticated social science to sell. Frequently, advertising employs psychological insights to create needs and desires. At best, this is done without regard for consumers' well-being. At its worst, advertising is intended to undermine consumers' well-being, e.g., selling lifestyles around brands, and to younger and younger people to capture customers for life (Schor, 2004). As the adage goes, “I shop, therefore I am.” However, that's not the whole story. Advertising also benefits people by helping them fulfill needs and desires they already had. If you need a plumber, thankfully you can find one. Or if you want /need to change your car or bicycle, for instance, through advertisement you can easily learn the differences between products, which is important to get a better product specific to you. It may be possible for the informational benefits of advertising to be delivered without the downside needs-creation, but unlikely. The multitude of products and services depends upon producers to be able to differentiate themselves. Advertising also pays for all of the 'free' services that we receive online, e.g., google maps. It is difficult to know the net-benefits of these countervailing forces, and I suspect they are quite heterogenous across both observable and unobservable differences between people.
Doctor Kelsey J O'Connor
Researcher in the Economics of Well-being -
Agree I think the wellbeing effects of advertising depend less on the products themselves and more on how advertising interacts with our reference points. Advertising is rarely about informing us of needs we already have; it is mostly about creating new ones. By constantly shifting upward what we consider a “normal” or “desirable” life, it pushes our reference point further out of reach. If wellbeing is largely about the gap between what we have and what we aspire to, then advertising risks widening this gap. The result is a treadmill effect: the momentary excitement of consumption may be outweighed by a persistent sense of insufficiency. From this perspective, the net effect on wellbeing could well be negative, especially when advertising is pervasive and unavoidable. Of course, there are counterarguments (e.g. help people discover products that genuinely improve their lives). But at its core, I am afraid advertising thrives on dissatisfaction. If it systematically moves our benchmarks rather than allowing them to stabilize, it is unlikely to produce sustainable wellbeing gains.
Doctor Anthony Lepinteur
Research Scientist, University of Luxembourg -
Agree Advertising may have some positive effects on wellbeing. Researchers have found that it provides consumers with information, lowers search costs, can and can foster market competition (Benham 1972). Moreover, in the public-health sphere, mass-media campaigns can successfully promote healthier behaviors (Wakefield et al. 2010). However, a lot of evidence also shows the negative effect of advertising on wellbeing. One mechanism is the creation of needs: advertising creates desires for goods and lifestyles that individuals would not otherwise pursue. This process creates dissatisfaction with one’s current possessions and circumstances, while raising consumption aspirations faster than they can be met. Empirical research shows that advertising fosters materialistic values, that are consistently associated with lower life satisfaction and higher psychological distress (Dittmar et al. 2014). Advertising fosters conspicuous and defensive consumption, where individuals spend in order to keep up with peers, often with little or no improvement in happiness (Kasser 2002). While this is true across age groups, younger people may be particularly affected by exposure to idealized lifestyles and body images that increase anxiety, body dissatisfaction, and disordered eating (see research from Grabe et al. 2008). Digital advertising also creates concerns: micro-targeting on smartphones exploits dopamine-driven engagement loops, reinforcing their use; harvesting of personal data could undermine autonomy and privacy that two important determinants of wellbeing (some evidence of this by Acquisti et al. 2016). Also, at the societal level, cross-national panel evidence suggests that higher advertising expenditure predicts declines in average life satisfaction over time (Michel et al. 2019).
Doctor Giulia Slater
Economics Researcher, STATEC, Luxembourg -
Completely agree I completely agree. First of all, I will conceptualize well-being as (1) hedonic well-being (e.g., life satisfaction, positive emotions, negative emotions, etc.), (2) hedonic well-being (e.g., autonomy, relatedness, competence, meaning, etc.) and health (see Ryan & Deci, 2000). Second, it is important to note that we live in a consumer culture (Dittmar, 2008; Kasser, 2016). The current consumer culture aims to convince people that possessions, money, fame and image (extrinsic life goals) instead of strong social ties, self-development and prosociality (intrinsic life goals) are the way to be happy, increase well-being and flourish. Let me give me an example, please. Just see the T.V., the Internet, and the radio and, please, observe that public advertisings are rooted in the consumer culture, trying making people more materialistic. Unfortunately, more than 50 years of research has shown that materialistic is detrimental for people well-being in several areas of life (education, work, family life, sports, etc.). For example, several meta-analysis have shown that the higher the materialism, the lower the life satisfaction, positive emotions, autonomy, competence, relatedness, meaning and health. In addition, the higher the materialism is associated with higher negative emotions, bad health, low energy, burnout, pro-sociality and ethics (see Dittmar et al. (2014) and Bradshaw et al. (2023).. In conclusion, yes! Despite that some kind of advertising (see answer # 2) are good for well-being, most of them has the oppositive effect. References: Bradshaw, E. L., Conigrave, J. H., Steward, B. A., Ferber, K. A., Parker, P. D., & Ryan, R. M. (2023). A meta-analysis of the dark side of the American dream: Evidence for the universal wellness costs of prioritizing extrinsic over intrinsic goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 124(4), 873. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000431 Dittmar, H. (2007). Consumer culture, identity and well-being: The search for the'good life'and the'body perfect'. Psychology press. Dittmar, H., Bond, R., Hurst, M., & Kasser, T. (2014). The relationship between materialism and personal well-being: A meta-analysis. Journal of personality and social psychology, 107(5), 879. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037409 Kasser, T. (2016). Materialistic values and goals. Annual review of psychology, 67(1), 489-514. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-122414-033344 Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2001). On happiness and human potentials: A review of research on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Annual review of psychology, 52(1), 141-166. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.141
Professor Wenceslao Unanue
Associate Professor, Business School, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez -
Neither agree nor disagree I find it difficult to conclude that advertising has any specific effect on wellbeing. There are certainly potential dangers such as false advertising. And ads can skew one's perception about what is healthy and normative. But people can also be educated to critically evaluate advertisements and understand that it is not meant as form of objective communication, but persuasion. In my view, people typically resist direct efforts One area where I think ads can have net-negative effects on wellbeing is targeted advertisements that use algorithms to detect viewer preferences. A person who is inclined to click on links for "deals" on certain foods or products might develop unhealthy habits that are constantly being reinforced by ads. The danger of ads in this case is that the person is driven by temptation and less able to evaluate the potential consequences in a rational manner.
Professor William Tov
Associate Professor of Psychology at Singapore Management University -
Neither agree nor disagree Advertising is necessary to provide the information participants need to make choices in markets. Some may suggest that advertising can have detrimental effects (loss aversion, envy) by enticing some consumers to purchase more than is necessary, thus encouraging inefficiency. But are we to deny some the information they need to make rational choices just because others make less than optimal choices due to the influence of advertising?
Doctor Tony Beatton
Visiting Fellow, Queensland University of Technology (QUT) -
Completely agree Most products advertised are discretionary, i.e. we don't actually need them: icecream, soft drinks, liquor etc. Many are not good for your physical health. Of course, they are advertised because they are discretionary i.e. we could be alternatives.
Professor Philip Morrison
Professor Emeritus, School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences Victoria University of Wellington (Te Herenga Waka) -
Agree Although I personally believe that advertising has a net-negative effect on well-being, the literature remains inconclusive, and the impact is likely to depend on the type of advertising, the context of exposure, and the surrounding consumer culture. A negative relationship between advertising and well-being is most plausibly explained by the fact that many advertisements foster material aspirations and social comparisons. At the same time, advertising can also enhance subjective well-being directly by elevating mood, and indirectly by making free or low-cost media services accessible.
Professor Martijn Burger
Academic Director at the Erasmus Happiness Economics Research Organisation, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Endowed Professor of Happiness Economics at the Open University of the Netherlands -
Agree One aspect are the resource costs of the competition for attention. Another aspect refers to strategies exploiting our "limitations" in dealing with novel advertising techniques that lead us to decisions that are not in our best interest.
Professor Alois Stutzer
Professor of Political Economics, University of Basel -
Neither agree nor disagree The right sorts of advertising are crucial for intelligent choices, while the wrong sorts trigger happiness-reducing social comparisons.
Professor John Helliwell
Professor Emeritus of Economics, University of British Columbia
World Wellbeing Panel
In August 2025, members of the World Wellbeing Panel were asked for their views on two statements relating to advertising and wellbeing.
The two statements were as follows:
Statement 1: Advertising has a net-negative effect on wellbeing.
Statement 2: Advertisers should be prohibited from making or implying unsubstantiated claims about the emotional, social, or wellbeing effects of their products on consumers.
Response options for each statement were: “completely agree”, “agree”, “neither agree nor disagree”, “disagree”, “completely disagree”.
Below are the distributions of these categorical responses, followed by a discussion. You can click where indicated to see respondents' detailed written comments.
Advertising has a net-negative effect on wellbeing.
Advertisers should be prohibited from making or implying unsubstantiated claims about the emotional, social, or wellbeing effects of their products on consumers.
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Completely agree In general, I think advertisers should be prohibited by making false claims, and this is a particular example.
Professor Daniel Benjamin
Associate Professor of Economics, University of Southern California -
Disagree Prohibited is harsh. Advertisers should show evidence or use tentative language.
Professor Lara Aknin
Distinguished Professor of Social Psychology, Simon Fraser University -
Neither agree nor disagree This approach faces significant challenges in practice. Emotional, social, and well-being effects are subjective and abstract, making it difficult to establish clear, objective criteria for substantiated claims in these areas. This subjectivity complicates the creation and enforcement of precise regulations. Given these challenges, a more practical and effective approach may be to focus on consumer education. Empowering consumers with critical thinking skills and media literacy enables them to evaluate persuasive advertising messages more effectively.
Professor Mohsen Joshanloo
Associate Professor (Psychology), Keimyung University, South Korea -
Completely agree Advertisers should stick to claims about products and services that are based in science or verifiable...
Professor Aaron Jarden
Associate professor, Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne -
Completely disagree Advertising is inherently deceitful and humans are inifinitely creative in finding ways to circumvent rules on deceptive information. Worse, I would not trust any authority with judging the claims about effect of anything, and fear the censorship purposes prohibitive rules on content would be used for. So this is completely unworkable and it would harm society to have such impossible rules available for authority to abuse.
Professor Paul Frijters
Professorial Research Fellow, CEP Wellbeing Programme, London School of Economics -
Agree I would somewhat agree that making totally unsubstantiated claims about the emotional, social, or wellbeing effects should be regulated, but it is a difficult balance. Where exactly is the line between making a claim and implying one? Some products may have an effect of improving one's wellbeing, even if there is not clear evidence showing this. Should advertisers have some ability to suggest/imply this?
Professor Stephen Wu
Professor of Economics, Hamilton College -
Agree 'Truth in advertising' laws are appropriate policies to adopt. They are akin to laws that prevent fraud or other forms of misrepresentation, and are consistent with improving economic efficiency and welfare through ensuring that decisions are made with accurate and reasonably complete information. I cannot agree 'completely' with the statement, however, as any law that attempts to prevent 'implications' would represent a draconian limitation on freedom of expression with resulting negative wellbeing consequences. Who would be the arbiter if a car was advertised with a beautiful scenic background or if a beautiful woman (or man) were to endorse a particular product in circumstances where no untruthful claim was made?
Professor Arthur Grimes
Chair of Wellbeing and Public Policy, School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington -
Disagree There are good reasons to prohibit companies from spreading objectively false information in their advertising. It should not be permissible for companies to lie outright. At the same time, I do not consider it justified to prohibit companies from explicitly or implicitly suggesting in their advertising that their products have “emotional, social, or wellbeing effects.” Ultimately, this type of advertising should be regarded as a form of popular culture and art. Bans would restrict artistic freedom and amount to state censorship. Instead of imposing prohibitions, one should appeal to people’s reason to view such advertising as art rather than as a source of objective information.
Professor Andreas Knabe
Professor (Chair in Public Economics), Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg -
Completely agree This is obvious. In most places advertisers are prohibited from lying or deceitfully insinuating about physical effects of their products and services (and their industries, not governments, self-regulate in many jurisdictions). Why should deceitful (or fanciful) claims about psychological effects -- how happy a product will make you, or how much it will make others like you --- be in a wholly different category? We have plenty of evidence that people have already become cognitively misguided about what is most important for being satisfied with their lives. We have materialistic and consumptive biases as compared with what life satisfaction evidence tells us is important. Even more importantly and urgently, it is critical that advertising be denied the right to target individuals. This is unconscionable, given how absurdly easy humans are to manipulate and how powerful AI algorithms can become. I have written about this; see https://wellbeing.research.mcgill.ca/publications/Time_to_unfriend_Facebooks_ad_strategy_TheStar_20180412.html
Professor Chris Barrington-Leigh
Professor, McGill University -
Neither agree nor disagree This would reduce the negative impacts of advertising on wellbeing by increasing the probability that ads become more informative (to help consumers take better decisions) rather than a tool to increase consumer needs. It is however not obvious that claiming that products have emotional impacts is the only mechanism that companies have to generate new needs.
Professor Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell
Professor of Economics, IAE-CSIC -
Neither agree nor disagree The main reason not to agree with this is the opacity of the mechanism. Who exactly is going to be policing this? How does one measure, much less "substantiate", the emotional, social, or wellbeing effects of a consumer product? If implemented in a wise manner that resists corruption and ever-increasing bureaucratic control, perhaps the proposed move would on net increase wellbeing - although people are well-known for making up reasons why they need things, if they want them enough (even if they are not actually good for them) so the absence of explicit or implicit claims in an ad may have only a small effect on actual behaviour.
Professor Gigi Foster
Professor, School of Economics, UNSW School of Economics -
Disagree I entirely agree with the idea that advertisers should not be deliberately making misleading claims about their products, and that restrictions on such forms of advertising should be supported by legislation. This statement, however, is about "unsubstantiated claims", which is very different. It raises many questions in my mind including not least, who will be the arbiter of what is "true" (i.e., substantiated) and what is not. And I could foresee unintended consequences: for example, in the public health space. Political advertising would also presumably be much curtailed given many of the claims made in political advertising are by their very nature contestable. Some might see this as a good thing, but I would worry about the ability of Governments to use this power to silence their political opponents.
Professor Mark Wooden
Professorial Research Fellow and Director of the HILDA Survey Project, Melbourne Institute: Applied Economic and Social Research, Faculty of Business and Economics, University of Melbourne -
Completely agree This position is well-supported in the academic literature and already serves as the baseline in many jurisdictions, at least in developed countries. Unsubstantiated claims clearly reduce well-being. The core problem lies not in the absence of rules, but in their weak enforcement, which is often deprioritized. A major reason for this lack of prioritization is the influence of powerful business lobbies. A more pertinent question, therefore, is whether nations should invest more in enforcing these regulations. The answer is clearly yes. At present, people spend a substantial share of their wealth on products they believe will make them happier, but which ultimately do not. This misallocation of resources is one contributing factor to the Easterlin paradox. Moreover, nations should take a more active role in updating regulations to close common loopholes, such as those that permit puffery and the use of misleading terminology.
Professor Martijn Hendriks
Associate Professor, Erasmus University Rotterdam & University of Johannesburg -
Completely agree This will be difficult to enforce. Many countries have good consumer protection laws already in place and yet creative advertisers find ways around this or gray areas.
Professor Martin Binder
Professor of Socio-Economics at Bundeswehr University Munich -
Completely agree In addition to misleading advertising, I would add strong restrictions on advertising to children and some quantitative restrictions for everyone. Public health services could thus benefit from a healthier population and children.
Professor Maurizio Pugno
Full Professor of Economics, University of Cassino -
Completely agree Advertisers are already prohibited (in many jurisdictions) from making misleading or deceptive claims about their products, i.e., false advertising. Unsubstantiated claims about product effects qualifies as deceptive or misleading, regardless of whether the effect is on physical or mental health, for instance, or any other class of outcome. Advertisers may argue unsubstantiated is not deceptive, if the advertiser believes the claim to be true and only lacks evidence to support their claim. Nonetheless, consumer protection laws place the burden of information on producers due to information asymmetries and producers' economies of scale in gathering information. Knowing this, consumers can expect producers, and by extension advertisers, to only advertise substantiated effects. Advertising the effects, without knowing if they are true, is deceptive, which is against the law, at least in many jurisdictions.
Doctor Kelsey J O'Connor
Researcher in the Economics of Well-being -
Completely agree Unsubstantiated claims, whether about wellbeing or any other kind of benefit, should indeed be prohibited to protect consumers. What makes wellbeing claims distinctive is that they are harder to pin down: promises that a product will make you “happier,” “more confident,” or “more socially connected” often slip through because they are too vague to be legally challenged. From a consumer perspective, however, the harm is similar to more concrete false claims: people are led to expect improvements that may never come. So while the principle is not new, applying it rigorously to wellbeing-related claims seems especially important if we care about safeguarding trust and avoiding systematic disappointment.
Doctor Anthony Lepinteur
Research Scientist, University of Luxembourg -
Neither agree nor disagree We should definitely be cautious about wellbeing claims in advertising, as they can mislead people into thinking a product will bring happiness, social approval, or self-esteem—something that is especially worrying when children and adolescents are the target, since they are more vulnerable to persuasive messages. At the same time, a total ban might be excessive. Wellbeing is subjective, and many emotional appeals in advertising (such as “feel refreshed” or “enjoy life”) are more symbolic than they are literal. The challenge is drawing the line between “puffery” and deception. Rather than prohibiting everything, the better path would be stricter rules: if a company claims their product improves wellbeing (health in particular), it should be backed up with evidence, and where that evidence doesn’t exist, disclaimers should be mandatory. This would protect consumers, especially the most vulnerable, while still leaving room for creativity and honest marketing.
Doctor Giulia Slater
Economics Researcher, STATEC, Luxembourg -
Completely disagree I completely disagree. As I already explained in question # 1, most advertising has negative effect on people’s well-being and need to be banned. For examples, advertising directed to child and adolescents. Nonetheless, it is impossible to recognize that there are several advertisings that help to protect people’s well-being. For example, society need to have positive advertisings. Please, let me give you some examples: a. Health: We need to have health advertising – regulated from governments and based on good science – that allow people to learn which products are good/bad for their physical and mental health (e.g. medicines, treatments). b. Foods: We need to have food advertising – regulated from governments and based on good science – that allow people to learn which products are good/bad for their body and mind health (e.g., fruits and vegetables instead of sugar-based foods). c. Exercise: We need to have exercise advertising – regulated from governments and based on good science – that allow people to learn how to protect their body and mind making the right kind of exercise (waling, running, mindfulness). d. Alcohol and tabaco consumption: We need to have alcohol consumption advertising – regulated from governments and based on good science – that allow people to learn how much consumption is dangerous. e. Etc.
Professor Wenceslao Unanue
Associate Professor, Business School, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez -
Completely agree I agree with this and it is even more critical given the use of algorithms to detect individuals who might be most vulnerable to accepting such claims. With the use of AI to generate realistic videos, I believe regulation needs to be strengthened. Imagine how easy it will be to generate false "before" and "after" photos or videos. There needs to be stricter rules and guidelines about how AI can be used in ads, and new ways of investigating advertising claims will need to be developed.
Professor William Tov
Associate Professor of Psychology at Singapore Management University -
Agree Most countries have laws to prohibit such claims. The issue is administering them, particularly where products or services do not exactly fit into the definitions under the law. An example would be the recent health claims from vitamin manufacturers in Australia, when in fact their products contain excessively high vitamin B levels, which is detrimental to health and wellbeing. Can industry group self-administer through codes of practice, or do we need to codify expected behavior and health and wellbeing claims; and at what cost to the community? Caveat Emptor Buyer beware. If a buyer is not aware what is the pathway to compensation? Expensive civil lawsuits or protection under the law, which law? All very complicated and costly isn't it!
Doctor Tony Beatton
Visiting Fellow, Queensland University of Technology (QUT) -
Completely agree There is no reason why prohibition for false claims (e.g.ability to cure a physical ailment) should not be extended to claims about mental illnesses which may not be as easily measured (e.g. wellbeing) but are at least as important. The implementation devil lies in the detail.
Professor Philip Morrison
Professor Emeritus, School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences Victoria University of Wellington (Te Herenga Waka) -
Neither agree nor disagree Yes, unless they can provide causal evidence for this. Key is that consumers should be able to make informed choices. Just as food and pharmaceutical companies must substantiate health claims, emotional and well-being claims should be held to similar standards.
Professor Martijn Burger
Academic Director at the Erasmus Happiness Economics Research Organisation, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Endowed Professor of Happiness Economics at the Open University of the Netherlands -
Neither agree nor disagree It is unclear to me how such a regulation would be implemented.
Professor Alois Stutzer
Professor of Political Economics, University of Basel -
Agree Advertiser should themselves be promoting standards for such claims, with an oversight role from a consumer protection branch.
Professor John Helliwell
Professor Emeritus of Economics, University of British Columbia
Analysis
Wellbeing Statement 1:
This month we asked for our panelists to respond to the idea that "Advertising has a net-negative effect on wellbeing."The most common response was the equivocal one.
Benjamin and Joshanloo both described the question as difficult to answer, and many, like Helliwell, thought that there are both good and bad sorts of advertising.
Frijters, like some others, believed that though there may be good and bad, there is too much bad at the moment, so that "on the margin" the net effect is negative.
Hendriks and Barrington-Leigh each enumerated five different functions and impacts of advertising in order to break down the question. Competition for name recognition between prominent brands probably has little social benefit, as a zero-sum game, while an increase of competition from new entrants is likely positive (Knabe). However, Foster points out that larger players can advertise more easily.
Many respondents referred to the creation of non-intrinsic needs as a form of harm; Ferrer-i-Carbonell wrote that advertising "increases the distance between what individuals have and what they want", and Lepinteur used very similar language.
Pugno also blames advertising for two other effects: the fragmentation of attention, also mentioned by Stutzer, and the underestimation of the value of time. Pugno goes on to explain the ramifications of these effects. He begins his response with a reference to the debate between John K. Galbraith and Milton Friedman on this subject. It frames a major issue arising across a number of respondents: should we advocate for consumer sovereignty as the ability to filter information perfectly, or as the freedom to choose what to pay attention to, and when?
Foster believes that "general research skills and pro-active information search are weak", and Grimes (among others) mentions that public service announcements can counteract asymmetric information, both arguments for having advertising around. By contrast, Barrington-Leigh claims that in light of the modern information access and synthesis infrastructure, alternatives now exist, making the old, attention-imposing form of advertising obsolete, including for public service announcements. O'Connor thinks this unlikely: "It may be possible for the informational benefits of advertising to be delivered without the downside needs-creation, but unlikely."
Tov is more optimistic about human abilities: "people can also be educated to critically evaluate advertisements and understand that it is not meant as form of objective communication, but persuasion". Beatton goes further, writing that those who are incapable of making good choices in the face of advertising shouldn't ruin it for those who are more able.
Frijters also points out, broadening the frame of the question: "Everyone is selling themselves to the rest of the world".
Binder also thought broadly, pointing out that workers in the marketing industry may suffer low wellbeing from "a job which gnaws at your soul" if you know you are manipulating people against their own interest.
Only Wooden "disagree"d with the statement, based on reflecting "In absence of research, what type of society would I prefer to live in: one where advertising was banned or one where there were few restrictions on advertising?" and choosing the latter.
Indeed, many panelists gave their response without citing specific evidence from the literature, but Hendriks, Slater, and Unanue gave extensive citations on this topic.
Wellbeing Statement 2:
Our second proposition for debate was that "Advertisers should be prohibited from making or implying unsubstantiated claims about the emotional, social, or wellbeing effects of their products on consumers." The most chosen response was Strong Agreement, but opinions extended all the way to two panelists who strongly disagreed.A common critical argument was about the practicality of enforcement due to subjective and abstract criteria; Joshanloo writes that a better approach is consumer education. Moreover, Frijters and Grimes claim that such rules would be dangerous to enforce, and harmful for "society to have impossible rules for authority to abuse".
Knabe goes further, to suggest that, while objectively false information should not be allowed, explicitly or implicitly suggesting "emotional, social, or wellbeing" impacts should be protected as art.
Maybe relatedly, Wooden points out that claims in political advertising are almost universally contestable.
Ferrer-i-Carbonell writes that fixing the loophole related to false psychological claims about products would not solve the problem of generating "new needs".
Two lines of response contradicted the claims about the dangers or impossibility of regulation. Barrington-Leigh points out that advertising industries already largely self-regulate in many countries. This is true especially in Europe, and hybrid systems --- in which a government agency exists in principle only to act as an enforcement backstop for a self-regulatory organization --- are in place in many other countries.
Helliwell advocates for exactly this hybrid approach: "Advertisers should themselves be promoting standards for such claims, with an oversight role from a consumer protection branch."
The second line was that the prohibition under debate is already in place (Beatton, O'Connor). Hendriks writes that ineffective enforcement is the real problem, rather than the current wording or absence of rules. He advocates for more resources being allocated to such enforcement. He also gives examples of current loopholes, such as permitting puffery and misleading terminology.
Binder writes in a similar vein, saying that good consumer protection laws in place are currently creatively evaded.
Some along the way, added other rules they would like to enforce: strong restrictions on advertising to children, and "some quantitative restrictions for everyone" (Pugno), a ban on individual targeting (Barrington-Leigh), and restrictions on how AI can be used in ads (Tov).
Lepinteur sums up this whole line of argument by writing "while the principle is not new, applying it rigorously to wellbeing-related claims seems especially important if we care about safeguarding trust and avoiding systematic disappointment."
Overall, we might summarize the insights to this question by pointing out that in the domain of holding advertising to account, more attention is needed towards claims about mental and subjective outcomes, just as it is in medicine and public health and policy in general.