Effects of the Attitude toward Food Safety on the Consumption of Processed Food

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of attitude toward food safety on the consumption of processed foods. The attitude is measured by two different approaches using consumer survey results. First, based on whether the consumers regard the safety as a relatively important factor, among others, when they purchase food, safety-sensitive and safety-nonsensitive consumer groups are divided. Second, based on whether consumers concern about safety information among the informations they are checking when they purchase food, safety-caring and safety-indifferent consumer groups are divided. For the division of consumer groups, K-Means Clustering is applied. By using a probit model and investigation of the marginal effect derived from the estimation results of the probit model, we analyze the purchase pattern of the consumer groups for the five different kinds of processed food. According to the estimation result, the purchasing experience for processed foods by the consumers who care about food safety is increasing. It is estimated that the consumers who care about food safety are more likely to buy imported and premium products.