Consumer Food Safety Risk Behavior Research Base On The Perspective Of Risk Perception And Trust

An old Chinese proverb goes that bread is the staff of life, suggesting that food holds an enormous influence for the understanding of Chinese history and social reality. So when food becomes the focus of public attention again, we must confront its impact. In the recent years, a series of food safety problems took place in China, which highlights the importance of food safety issue. Taking pork as an example, which is the kind of mostly consumed meat in China, the illegal addition of Clenbuterol(瘦肉精)during the pig production have harassed the Chinese consumer for several years, even now the problem have not be solved. The food safety issue is a social fact, to grasp its essence require the imagination of social research. From the perspective of risk society, we believe that the study of consumer food safety behavior, which includes food safety risk perception, risk aversion, business trust and political trust, is of paramount importance.To be more specific, this study takes risk perception and trust as the basic theoretical perspective, investigate several major risk behavior of consumer including food safety risk perception, trust and food safety risk aversion, then further explore the issue of food safety risk communication, food safety risk education and food safety risk management. This study conduct the questionnaire survey of the consumer of Wuhan city to abstain the survey data, and the measurement scale include food safety evaluation scale, food safety abstract perception scale, food enterprise trust scale, food safety supervision department trust scale, and food safety risk aversion behavior scale. The data analysis method of this study combines mean value analysis, factor analysis, regression analysis and correlation analysis and structural equation model analysis.The main conclusion of the study is as following:(1) this study analyzes the current state of consumer’s food safety risk perception from both a concrete and a abstract perspective. The results show that the consumer have a very high perception of food safety risk from both concrete and abstract levels. The consistency between concrete and abstract level indicate that consumer’s food safety risk perception have already shifted form contingent food safety problem to overall safety of food industry. And the inconsistency between different level of risk perception indicate that relationship between risk perception and actual risk evaluation is not a linear correlation, but a relationship that subjected to the influence of multiple factor. The known factor that significantly influence the food safety risk perception include risk dimension characteristics, which include controllability, severity, dreadful degree and probability; personal subjective factor, which include risk evaluation probability, perspection of media attention, experience accumulation and living attitude; and some social population characteristics, including gender, marital status, household member number and minor number.(2) This study has analyzed the consumer’s trust for food enterprise and government supervision department, then analyze the relationship between food safety risk perception and the two kind of trust. Based on these analyses, this study discusses the possible channel for food safety risk communication. The analysis of the consumer’s trust for the food enterprise consists of the degree of trust, the dimension of trust and the factor that influence trust. The analysis of the consumer’s trust for food safety supervision department also consist of the degree of trust for supervision department, the dimension of trust of government and the factor that influence trust of government. The correlation analysis between food safety risk perception and consumer trust to a quiet extent verified the "modulation and control" model’s ability to give explanations for the phenomenon of food safety.(3) For the analysis of the consumer food safety risk aversion, based on the plan-behavior theory, this study take account of the risk perception model, construct an extended analyzing framework for the research of cognition behind the food safety risk aversion behavior. The analysis of this theory by structural equation model show that the cognition for risk aversion behavior were subjected to the influence of risk perception level, risk aversion attitude, subjective norm and the subjective ability to control risk aversion. Risk aversion attitude have the highest influence, risk perception level and the subjective ability to control risk aversion come next, and the subjective norm have the lowest influence. The level of risk perception was measured by the consumer’s subject perception of the potential health, financial, psychological, performance and societal risk they were subjected to, and their perception of probability, controllability, dreadful degree, appreciablility and severity of the risk. The result show that controllability was negatively correlated with the level of risk perception, that the lower the controllability is, the higher the level of risk perception will be. Probability has highest positive influence, and it mainly influence the perception for potential performance damage. And the dreadful degree was mainly come from the general concern for the public food safety. Finally, all of these factors have a potential influence on the consumer’s cognition for the risk aversion behavior.Based on the above understanding, this study suggest that the government should proceed the food safety management not only by technical control of food safety risk, but also by improving the public’s the rational understanding of food safety risk perception, which can’t be realized without good reciprocal communication mechanism and new risk aversion behavior model in the whole society. Thus, the study of consumer’s food safety risk behavior would provide some beneficial inspiration for both the food safety management of government and the marketing management of food enterprise...