Beyond information seeking: Consumers’ online deliberation about the risks and benefits of red meat

Consumers' food control risk attitude for blockchain traceable information seeking: Evidence from fresh fruit buyers in China

The blockchain-based traceability in agri-food marketing has brought a disruptive paradigm shift by removing the inherent information asymmetry problem. Likewise, revealing sufficient product quality and attributes information could break agricultural markets' “Lemon Market” dilemma. This study takes the fresh fruit with blockchain traceability QR label as a case and systematically investigates the influence of consumers' food control risk attitude on information-seeking intentions. We utilized online survey data of 1,058 fresh fruit buyers and simultaneously applied ordinary least square (OLS), ordered logit model (Ologit), and propensity score matching (PSM) approaches to overcome the potential self-selection biases and confounding factors. The results show that risk attitude significantly negatively impacts consumers' information seeking fresh fruits. The stronger consumers' risk preference, the lower the probability of information seeking. Furthermore, we used PSM to overcome potential sample selectivity bias; therefore, PSM reinforces the significance of OLS and Ologit results. The sub-sample estimation results show that young individuals with high school and below education have stronger blockchain information-seeking intentions. The study provides new insights into the role of food control risk attitude and agri-food information traceability and offers several measures for policy and practice to realize a border trajectory in agri-food information disclosure.

Facing Food Risk Perception: Influences of Confinement by SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic in Young Population

A new food safety level of trust in food risk perception has been noticed, as a consequence of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The pandemic made-up to review nutritional recommendations for the population, mainly for the young population. Here, the results of a designed survey for the young population, from the University of Valencia, Spain, belonging to grades in the health branch of knowledge, and in charge of carrying out the shopping task for their household, are reported. The study reports three different scenarios and years, as defined by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: before the pandemic (period January−December 2019), during the pandemic lockdown (period March 2020−August 2020), and after the pandemic lockdown (September 2020−June 2021). The survey was designed with questions, profiling responses using the best−worst elicitation (BWE) format. Results reported that trust and evaluation of information differed in all three scenarios. In the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, there was (i) a high increase in trust in the information provided inside (by) the shopping place, while there were no changes for the outside (kept in medium score); (ii) trust in cooperative stakeholders went from a medium-low to medium-high score, while, for individual stakeholders, it was maintained as a medium score, and (iii) trust in information on food products was kept in high score. Regarding the evaluation of the information provided by stakeholders, a tendency in medium score was maintained, while that from the channels of distribution went from medium-low to medium-high for buying on-site. A uniform tendency was observed for online/other distribution channels for all three years and descriptors studied: “Internet”, “Farmer on-demand”, and “Cooperative consumers” (<50%). This research provides findings of implications that contribute to changing the perception of food risk, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, i.e., the adaptation of the young population, trust in safety and quality, and importance of coordination from all communication points to avoid negative or strongest consequences, in case of future lockdowns or health crisis.

Different Frames to Reduce Red Meat Intake: The Moderating Role of Self-Efficacy

Previous research has shown that messages aimed at reducing red meat intake often do not have the expected effect. In the present study, we tested whether prefactual ("If… then") or factual messages focused on health or wellbeing concerns have different persuasive effects depending on the recipient's level of eating self-efficacy. Young adult participants (N = 247) completed a questionnaire measuring their eating self-efficacy and current red meat consumption. They were then presented with a prefactual or factual version of a message describing the possible negative impact of excessive red meat consumption on either health or wellbeing. After reading the message participants reported their involvement with the message and intention to eat red meat in the future. Results showed that prefactual wellbeing messages and factual health messages trigger participants' involvement and, in turn, reduce their intention to eat red meat more than the other message combinations. Eating self-efficacy moderates these effects, with factual health messages persuading people with high self-efficacy and prefactual wellbeing messages persuading also receivers with an average level of self-efficacy. Discussion focuses on which message frames can be more effective in promoting a reduction in red meat consumption in a wider population.