College of Economics and Management, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China.
Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, Louisiana State University (LSU) and LSU Agricultural Center, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Mar 31;17(7):2376. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17072376.
Consumers' food safety risk information-seeking behavior plays a vital role in improving their food quality and safety awareness and preventing food safety risks. Based on the Risk Information Seeking and Processing Model (RISP), this paper empirically analyzes the food safety risk information-seeking intention of consumers in WeChat and influencing factors under the impact of food safety incidents. We use data from 774 WeChat users and apply the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. We also conduct multigroup analysis with demographic characteristics as moderating variables. The results demonstrated that: (1) Risk perception ( ≤ 0.01) has direct significant positive effects on consumers' intention to seek food safety information. Besides, higher risk perception ( ≤ 0.01) regarding food safety risks will make people feel more anxious and threatened, and then expand the gap between the information they need and the relevant knowledge they actually have ( ≤ 0.1), which will further stimulate them to seek more information ( ≤ 0.05). (2) Informational subjective norms ( ≤ 0.01) can not only directly affect consumers' information-seeking about food safety, but also indirectly affect consumers' intention through information insufficiency ( ≤ 0.01). (3) The more consumers trust the relevant channels ( ≤ 0.01), the stronger their intention to search for food safety risk information. Moreover, the multiple-group analysis also shows that the effects of consumers' gender, age, educational background, and average monthly earnings are different among different groups. Furthermore, implications are put forward for food safety risk communication efforts in China.
消费者食品安全风险信息寻求行为对于提高其食品质量安全意识和防范食品安全风险起着至关重要的作用。本研究基于风险信息寻求与处理模型（RISP），实证分析了食品安全事件冲击下消费者在微信平台上的食品安全风险信息寻求意向及其影响因素。我们使用了来自 774 名微信用户的数据，并采用结构方程模型（SEM）方法进行分析。同时，我们还进行了多群组分析，以人口统计学特征作为调节变量。结果表明：（1）风险感知（≤0.01）对消费者寻求食品安全信息的意愿具有直接显著的正向影响。此外，消费者对食品安全风险的感知越高（≤0.01），他们会感到更加焦虑和受到威胁，从而扩大他们所需信息与实际知识之间的差距（≤0.1），这将进一步刺激他们寻求更多信息（≤0.05）。（2）信息主观规范（≤0.01）不仅可以直接影响消费者对食品安全信息的寻求，还可以通过信息不足（≤0.01）间接影响消费者的信息寻求意向。（3）消费者对相关渠道的信任度越高（≤0.01），他们搜索食品安全风险信息的意愿就越强。此外，多群组分析还表明，消费者的性别、年龄、教育背景和月均收入在不同群体之间的影响效果存在差异。最后，本研究为中国的食品安全风险沟通工作提出了启示。
