Changes in consumers’ food purchase and transport behaviors over a decade (2010 to 2019) following health and convenience food trends

Tae Jin Cho, Sun Ae Kim, Hye Won Kim, Sun Min Park, Min Suk Rhee

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

13 Scopus citations

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 languageEnglish
Article number5448
Pages (from-to)1-14
Number of pages14
JournalInternational Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Volume17
Issue number15
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Aug 2020

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

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