关键词:
Risk perception
Food safety issues
Knowledge
Food additives
SAFETY ISSUES
SOCIAL TRUST
ENVIRONMENT
ACCEPTANCE
CONFIDENCE
ATTITUDES
BENEFITS
摘要:
Food safety issues have occurred frequently in China in recent years, which results in consumers' high risk perception of food additives. In the present research, we examined whether knowledge would decrease Chinese consumers' risk perception of food additives under the influence of food safety issues' risk perception; we also investigated how information selection impacted popularization effectiveness. Study 1 demonstrated that risk perception of food safety issues was positively correlated with risk perception of food additives. In addition, with increased risk perception of food safety issues, the higher level of knowledge weakened the influence of risk perception of food safety issues on risk perception of food additives. In Study 2, we proposed a consumer-riskfocused approach of knowledge popularization related to food additives, based on consumers' cognitive rules and concerns. We compared its popularization effectiveness with the comprehensive-knowledge-based approach at three time points. We found that the consumer-risk-focused approach significantly promoted the effectiveness of popularization, including increasing knowledge accuracy and trust, and decreasing risk perception. The present study provides evidence that risk perception of food safety issues leads to biased judgments and perceptions concerning food additives, but knowledge acts as a buffering function in this biased relationship. In addition, in terms of practical application, this study contributes to improving the effectiveness of knowledge popularization about food additives.