Public Perceptions of Food-related Risks: A Cross-national Investigation of Individual and Contextual Influences

Public concerns about food risks have grown in recent decades in response to many food-related scandals. Despite some evidence that risk concerns vary across societies and risk domains, these variations remain understudied. To address this gap, this paper conducts a multi-level analysis of public concerns about biological and chemical/technical food risks in 26 European countries. Findings confirm previous work on individual predictors of risk concern and suggest that several contextual factors contribute to cross-national variations: aggregate perceptions of risks as unnatural, retail concentration in the food sector, and media coverage. The effect of institutional trust on risk concerns varies substantially across nations. Findings also reveal important differences in public concerns about biological versus chemical/technical food risks, supporting the view that food risk perception is multi-dimensional and complex.

近年来，随着众多食品安全事件的曝光，公众对食品安全风险的担忧日益加剧。尽管已有研究表明，风险担忧在社会群体和风险领域之间存在差异，但这些差异的研究尚显不足。为此，本文对26个欧洲国家公众对生物和化学/技术性食品安全风险的担忧进行了多层次分析。研究结果证实了先前关于风险担忧个体预测因子的研究，并提出多个环境因素导致跨国差异：对风险的整体感知被视为非自然，食品行业的零售集中度，以及媒体报道。不同国家在制度信任对风险担忧的影响方面存在显著差异。研究还揭示了公众对生物与化学/技术性食品安全风险的担忧之间的重要差异，从而支持了食品安全风险感知的多维性与复杂性的观点。