Responding to Information‐Based Regulation: A Behavioral Analysis of the UK's Food Hygiene Ratings Scheme

Regulators increasingly rely on public information disclosure to influence organizational behaviors. Prior research is mixed on the effects of information‐based instruments in an environment of abundant online information. The study applies a behavioral perspective to examine how regulatory ratings shape the responses of regulated entities by serving as carriers of attention. We present evidence based on a natural experiment arising from regulatory changes in the United Kingdom and a dataset of the food hygiene rating scores of 286,605 food outlets within 2015–2019. The findings demonstrate how responses from food outlets vary based on features like physical versus online‐only disclosure. We discuss how behavioral responses can inform regulators' choice architecture of instrument design.