A Study Of Consumer’s Risk Perception Of Food Additives Under Food Scares

The worldwide food safety incidents have not only led to trade reduction betweencountries, but also have caused serious harm to people’s health and life around the world.Food safety risk has become a global problem. Undergoing profound restructuring anddeveloping, China has a relatively higher potential to strike by food safety incidents, whichhas made the food safety incidents become a widespread community concern. Food additivesplay an important role in improving food color, smell and taste, which is known as "the soulof the modern food industry". However, due to widely used in the food industry, foodadditives have resulting in food safety risks. In recent years, food safety incidents continue tooccur constantly due to the absence of moral and deliberate abuse of food additives in foodproduction process, and abuse of food additives has become one of the most feared risks forconsumers. At present, food safety risk in China has become more of a direct/indirect result ofsocial behavior than a direct result of natural factors, that is, the man-made factor havebecome a major factor for food safety. In view of this, this paper chooses food additives as asubject, takes the consumers in Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province for example, throughquestionnaire survey and experimental auction method to study consumer’s risk perception offood additives under food scares and analyzes the relationship between risk perception ofconsumers and their willingness to purchase and their willingness to accept.This paper has first studied on consumer’s risk perception of food additives and theirpurchase intentions. Based on expanded theory of planned behavior we have conducted asurvey on consumer’s risk perception of food additives. By adding two dimensions and usingStructural Equation model we have studied the relationship between risk perception andpurchase intention. We have found that subjective norms, information sources are the mainfactors which influence consumer’s risk perception of food additives and the risk perceptionof food additive has significantly affected consumer’s purchase intention. On this basis,further research has been conducted on the influence of different types of informationintroducing the positive and the negative information to the risk perception of consumers.Since the survey to measure consumer perception of risk exist bias defects, we introducedexperimental auction methods and used a random nth-price auction to verify and further theconclusion of the survey research under the real market environment. The main conclusionsof this study are:(1) Consumer’s risk perception of food additives derives from irregularly operating byfood production companies or abuse of additives caused by man-made. Human-derived factorhas become the main reason for consumers’ food safety risks perception.(2) Different sources and types of the information about food additives have differentimpact on consumer’s risk perception. Therefore, release the information about food safetyrisks timely and accurately, ensure the adequately flowing and accuracy of the information isthe basis for effective food safety risk communication.(3) Consumer’s risk perception of food additives varies with its information processingcapacity, impacted on the attention to their and their family’s health as well as the ability to foretell the consequence of information. Therefore, based on the difference betweenconsumers, we should use different information communicating methods.