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Risk perceptions and food-handling practices in the home

Author

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  • Evans, Keith S.
  • Teisl, Mario F.
  • Lando, Amy. M.
  • Liu, Sherry T.

Abstract

Unsafe food-handling practices in the home are linked with foodborne illnesses that represent sizable costs on the US healthcare industry and welfare losses to households. Past consumer food-safety education programs have only been modestly successful. Optimism bias may distort food-safety risk perceptions encouraging participation in risky food behaviors. Using multiple years of the FDA Food Safety Survey data, we explore the link between behavior-specific risk perceptions and three food-handling practices: handwashing, avoiding cross-contamination, and proper refrigeration of cooked foods. This approach describes risk perceptions as endogenous variables and allows for the decomposition of factors that directly influence food-safety behaviors, from those that indirectly influence behavior by changing risk perceptions. Our results suggest well-designed targeted information campaigns aimed at improving people’s safe food-handling practices must first decrease people’s optimism in the safety of their current practices. Given the lack of regulatory options to influence behavior in the home, this may provide an effective tool to address issues in performing safe food handling.

Suggested Citation

  • Evans, Keith S. & Teisl, Mario F. & Lando, Amy. M. & Liu, Sherry T., 2020. "Risk perceptions and food-handling practices in the home," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jfpoli:v:95:y:2020:i:c:s0306919220301433
    DOI: 10.1016/j.foodpol.2020.101939
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Food handling; Risk perceptions; Food safety; Discrete choice model;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q18 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Agricultural Policy; Food Policy; Animal Welfare Policy
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty

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