Abstract
Although consumers’ food purchase/transport have been reported as causes of food safety risks, there is a lack of empirical data that are feasible to identify persistent and emerging risky behaviors of consumers. This longitudinal trend study consists of individual consumer surveys in 2010 (n = 609) and 2019 (n = 605) to analyze changes in risky behaviors linked to food purchase/transport over a decade. Overall, the results identified purchase/transport time and purchase order as the emerging and unchanged risk factors, respectively. Consumers’ preferences into channels for purchase (large discount stores rather than small/traditional markets) and transport (using cars or delivery) implied the convenience as the noticeable trend. Whereas, unexpected increases in purchase/transport time highlighted the underestimated risks in long-term exposure of foods under inadequate temperature. Food should not be exposed to danger zones > 1–2 h, but consumers might be unaware of the risk especially for preferred channels (e.g., 77 and 36 min. are required for purchase and transport from large discount stores, respectively). In the case of unchanged risky behavior, more than half of consumers in both surveys did not follow proper purchasing orders. Our findings highlight the necessity for novel countermeasures and the improvement of current consumer guidelines against emerging and unchanged risky behaviors, respectively.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Article number | 5448 |
Pages (from-to) | 1-14 |
Number of pages | 14 |
Journal | International journal of environmental research and public health |
Volume | 17 |
Issue number | 15 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2020 Aug 1 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Funding: This research and the APC were funded by School of Life Sciences and Biotechnology for BK21 PLUS, Korea University.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Keywords
- Consumer survey
- Convenience
- Cultural consumer context
- Food preparation behavior
- Food purchase/transport time
- Food safety
- Food trend
- Healthy food consumption
- Microbiological risk
- Risk perception
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
- Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis