Pornography as Policy: Second-Level Effects Analysis

Karl Muth explores the relationships between the media, health, behaviour and policy.

This coming term at Northwestern University, I’m teaching a masters-level policy course in the Global Policy concentration (hello, new students!). I focus primarily on the economic analysis of various issues, but everywhere in the social sciences (including in areas far from economics) nowadays we hear about “second-level effects” – what are second-level effects and why are they important? Or are they important? And why do policymakers and policy wonks (perhaps mostly the latter) talk about how second-level effects are going to change behaviour (a bold claim in any policy context, as behaviour is notoriously difficult to directly alter through policymaking).

There is no question, at this point, that the widespread use of condoms is good public health policy. Condoms not only reduce the incidence of disease, but they reduce the incidence of high-cost concentrations of disease and reduce the damage to social networks. Because HIV/AIDS is overwhelmingly a disease of poverty (globally and locally), the use of condoms prevents the occurrence of expensive disease among populations least likely to be able to pay for care.

For those who do not have the safety and comfort of a monogamous, trusting relationship, limiting the exchange of bodily fluids has tremendous advantages over the long-run, particularly in southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa where sexually-transmitted diseases generally (and the HIV/AIDS epidemic in particular) are a substantial portion of the public health burden, both from a services standpoint and from a cost perspective. This is material you, as a resident of the developed world, likely already know. Now let’s move to material you may not know, or may not have contemplated.

People do not develop sexual desires, behaviours, and practices in a vacuum. Rather, these things are influenced by media. And a specific type of media: pornography. It is pornography that has changed, at least for decades and more likely for centuries, the expectations of people engaging in sex. Could changing the components of pornography change the practices people engage in when having sex? Is requiring condoms for porn stars important for the same reason some argue banning steroids in professional sports is important – in other words, less so that we’re all that concerned about the professionals but more that we’re concerned with amateurs who may attempt to imitate the professionals?

In this, some policy folks will argue, the first-level effect is protecting pornstars from disease because they will have to have sex with each other using condoms. However, the much broader effect – these policymakers argue and hope – will be the people who watch this pornography and, in their efforts to be ever-more-pornstar-like, will mimic the use of condoms seen in pornography. I predict this will fail. But not for sociological or anthropological reasons – rather, for economic reasons. Allow me to explain.

And, luckily, we have a natural experiment on our hands: A place where pornography comes from (but not other places that produce pornography) has decided to require condoms. Now, this isn’t all that great an experiment from a research methodology perspective, for reasons that will become apparent (mostly the mobility of the industry), but it’s interesting nonetheless.

Public health experts and policy analysts focused on public health have been following with interest the passage of, challenges to, and policy implications of so-called Measure B, which appeared on the ballot in Los Angeles County as the Los Angeles County Safer Sex in the Adult Film Industry Act. It passed in November of last year, but has been hung up in the courts ever since, primarily due to litigation by Vivid Entertainment.

What people will tell you, off the record, is that people don’t want to watch porn with condoms. In fact, people want to watch porn that occurs in a magical fantasy world where the condom was never invented, where orgasms occur on cue, and so on.

There are two problems with Measure B as policy, one jurisdictional and one economic.

1) The first is that L.A. County is big, but not big enough to set public health policy. No doubt it is the only county in the country that could even attempt to set condoms-in-porn as public health policy – it is where about 80% of American professional pornography originates, where four of the top ten pornography studios are headquartered and incorporated (the balance being incorporated in Delaware, Nevada, and New York), and encompasses within its jurisdictional ambit over 4,000 square miles (Greater London, for comparison, encompasses only about 600 square miles. There is no quarantine requiring people living in L.A. to watch porn made in L.A. (or people living in New York to watch porn made in New York).

2) No doubt the popularity of non-condom pornography guarantees a ready market will exist for pornography without condoms at a premium to pornography depicting sex with condoms. In other words, the “new pornography” will be vulnerable to the market effects of having to compete with the “old pornography.”

Due to the low switching costs producers of pornography experience in regard to geographical venue (yes, that "studio" can be moved up and down the California coast quite easily), it seems inevitable that Measure B, if implemented, will relocate the pornography business up the coast from L.A. (there is already a move toward more pornography being produced in Miami and other locations, so perhaps this will only add momentum to an already-underway migration) and will create a two-tiered system in the meantime.

Economically, I’d point out two factors.

1) There is an existing inventory of porn without condoms (think of this as “ready supply”). The correct way to model the production of pornography is as a marginal contribution to the total amount of pornography extant at time zero. In other words, at time one, there is an increase of X over the amount of pornography in existence at time zero. Because pornography is not a perishable good and not unique, pornography can be consumed many years after it is produced with essentially zero interim inventory cost and two people can watch the same clip of pornography without depleting its supply.

2) Pornography is not only a good, it is also a service. Many porn consumers are consuming the product on a subscription basis or even on a free basis. As such, they are not purchasing individual pieces of content and are less vulnerable to price fluctuations caused by increased production costs, changes of production venue, and other factors. Their consumption of content on a subscription or pay-for-service/pay-on-demand basis means the costs of producing new pornography are diluted within the larger pool economics of pornography already existing, as in part 1, supra.

After a thorough review of both economic and public policy arguments regarding Measure B, I conclude that it will have minimal short-term effects and negligible long-term effects on the pornography industry or the price of condom-less pornography for consumers. I anticipate that some pornography producers will physically relocate or set up (or acquire) subsidiaries outside Los Angeles County, but that these switching costs will be absorbed easily and that any costs passed on to the consumer will be sufficiently diluted as to not create a price shock at the final consumer threshold. I anticipate that pornography featuring unsheathed penises will continue to be the norm and readily accessible. Finally, I anticipate a substantial first-level effect (being a pornographic actor will become a safer profession) but a negligible second-level effect (pornography featuring condoms will not drive viewers to use condoms).

Let’s examine that last statement more closely: do second-level effects really work and are they strong enough to overcome extant social norms? Are we really able to set policy through popularity?

Perhaps.

There is growing (though still somewhat weak) evidence that philanthropy among celebrities reminds and encourages people to give to charity. There is some evidence that the use of safety equipment by celebrities (such as helmets whilst snowboarding) increases the adoption of this equipment by their fans, who are amateurs. There is overwhelming evidence among advertising literature that it does, in fact, matter that James Bond wears an Omega (though I’d argue the “real” James Bond wears a Rolex Submariner…) and drives an Aston Martin (though I’d point out the “real” James Bond of the novels drove a Bentley…). These things all have substantial effects on observer behaviour and adoption of modeled behaviour.

But health policy is different from purchasing habits. Convincing a man amidst a mid-life crisis that he should aim his aspirational angst at the Aston Martin dealership rather than the Porsche dealership is easy compared to changing his views on whether to wear a condom, vaccinate his children, or have his prostate examined. Why? Because these are intimate preferences that we adopt and reinforce through habit and that, perhaps most importantly, affect our behavior in private.

I do not look different on the tennis court if I have sex without a condom. My children do not look different at school if they are unvaccinated. My coworkers do not know whether anyone has examined my prostate recently. As a result, the social pressures of looking awesome wearing the cool new snowboard helmet on a ski trip with one’s friends do not apply to wearing a condom. There is no social reward to be collected from looking like the newest policymaker-mandated condom-clad pornstar.

The second-level effects (people wearing condoms because they saw someone in a pornographic film wear a condom), if they exist at all, are small because – unlike pornstars – most people have sex in the privacy and secrecy of their own homes. Simply because a policymaker mandates that all pornstars wear condoms does not mean the couple who has watched pornography will utilise one.

And, finally, putting on the common sense hat rather than the policy analysis one, perhaps the only thing to make condoms less attractive than they already are is to preface their use with, “Hold on a minute, I’m about to try something I saw in a pornographic film once.”