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Who is responsible for food risks? The influence of risk type and risk characteristics
Appetite 53 (2009) 123–126
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Appetite journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/appet
Short communication
Who is responsible for food risks? The influence of risk type and risk characteristics Sointu Leikas a,*, Marjaana Lindeman a, Katariina Roininen b,1, Liisa La¨hteenma¨ki b,2 a b
University of Helsinki, Department of Psychology, Helsinki, Finland VTT Technical Research Centre, Finland
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Article history: Received 6 July 2008 Received in revised form 8 March 2009 Accepted 2 May 2009
The influence of food risk type and risk characteristics on food risk responsibility judgments was studied. A total of 1270 Finnish consumers judged their personal responsibility and the responsibility of three non-personal targets, industry, retail, and society, in relation to six food-related risks. They also evaluated the risks on several psychometric dimensions. The ratings were gathered via internet questionnaire. Industry and society were considered to be most responsible for all risks but the risk of cardiovascular disease, for which personal responsibility was considered to be highest. Judgments of personal controllability predicted personal responsibility judgments, and unnaturalness judgments predicted non-personal targets’ judged responsibility. Personal responsibility judgments were related to different risk dimensions than judgments of non-personal targets’ responsibility. ß 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Food risk Responsibility Risk characteristics
People have a tendency to view themselves as less vulnerable to food risks than other people in general or less vulnerable than they actually are (Miles & Scaife, 2003; Sparks & Shepherd, 1994; Weinstein, 1989). This optimistic bias is problematic from the perspective of health education given that recognizing own vulnerability to risks is an important determinant of risk-reducing behavior (Janz & Becker, 1984). Optimistic bias is quite prevalent and difficult to counteract; therefore, it is important to find other ways to influence people’s food risk-related behavior. Research from areas other than food risks suggests that assuming higher personal responsibility for health risks increases health behavior. For instance, higher perceived personal responsibility has been shown to predict better hand hygiene behavior among health care workers (Jenner, Watson, Miller, Jones, & Scott, 2002). Furthermore, in a study concerning mammography screening to detect breast cancer, health messages emphasizing personal responsibility increased the perceived personal responsibility in cancer prevention and higher perceived personal responsibility then increased the likelihood of obtaining a mammography (Rothman, Salovey, Turvey, & Fishkin, 1993). In addition, among people with inflammatory bowel syndrome, higher personal responsibility predicts less use of avoidant coping strategies such as denial, emotional and behavioral disengagement, and substance use (Voth & Sirois, 2009). Hence, assuming higher personal
* Corresponding author. E-mail address: sointu.leikas@helsinki.fi (S. Leikas). 1 Katariina Roininen is now at Taloustutkimus Oy, Helsinki, Finland. 2 Liisa La¨hteenma¨ki is now at MAPP & Department of Marketing and Statistics, Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University, A˚rhus, Denmark. 0195-6663/$ – see front matter ß 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2009.05.003
responsibility for food risks could make people to adopt healthy habits and better coping strategies to deal with food risks. Besides consumers themselves, there are other targets potentially responsible for food risks. Previous research has not systematically compared people’s responsibility judgments towards different targets. Often, only one target, such as respondent herself, is included. Hence, it is somewhat unclear how responsibility is distributed across different agents in the food production chain, such as manufacturing industry, retail, consumers, and society in general. Previous results concerning responsibility of food risks have been mixed. Some studies suggest that people assume very high personal responsibility of their own food safety (Redmond & Griffith, 2004b; van Kleef et al., 2006). However, some other studies indicate that people consider food manufacturers to be responsible for food risks (Redmond & Griffith, 2004a). These conflicting findings may be due to the risk types used in these studies. Some food risks may evoke thoughts about own responsibility, whereas other risks may evoke thoughts about external responsibility. For instance, Redmond and Griffith (2004a) asked about microbial food safety, and found that a majority of respondents considered food manufacturers to be ‘‘ultimately responsible’’ for microbial risks. However, when asked about food risk-related responsibility in general (Redmond & Griffith, 2004b; van Kleef et al., 2006), most people considered themselves as highly responsible. Hence, it seems that food manufacturers are considered to be responsible for microbial risks, but that consumers probably view themselves as responsible for some other risks. However, it is not clear which risks. Furthermore, it is not clear whether food industry or some other targets are viewed as responsible also for some other types of risks as microbial risks. To
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clarify these issues, it seems desirable to simultaneously examine people’s responsibility judgments related to different types of risks. While the nature of the food risk may affect responsibility judgments generally, people’s subjective evaluations of the risk could also affect them. The psychometric paradigm has identified several evaluative dimensions that people use to assess risks (Slovic, 1988). These risk characteristics are also used to evaluate food risks (Fife-Schaw & Rowe, 1996; Sparks & Shepherd, 1994). From the perspective of responsibility judgments, certain risk characteristics seem especially important. First, people’s assessments of how ‘‘dreadful’’ (Slovic, 1988), i.e., how scary and likely the risk is may affect their responsibility judgments, as people usually assign more responsibility to potential targets in the case of severe (as compared to mild) outcomes (Baron & Hershey, 1988). Hence, judgments of risk scariness and likelihood may be positively related to responsibility judgments towards all targets. Furthermore, research based on attribution theory has shown that judgments of controllability are strongly related to judgments of responsibility (see Weiner, 1996). According to the psychometric paradigm, when faced with a food risk, people assess how personally controllable it is as well as whether it is man-made or naturally occurring (Fife-Schaw & Rowe, 1996). Judgments of personal responsibility could be affected by judgments of the risk’s personal controllability given that previous research has shown that personal controllability judgments concerning food risks in general are related to personal responsibility judgments of food risks in general (Redmond & Griffith, 2004b), but it seems important to investigate whether this is also the case when it comes to specific risks. Further, because manmade risks are likely to be viewed as more controllable than naturally occurring risks, judgments of the risk being man-made could affect responsibility judgments of all targets. In the present study, people’s responsibility judgments are systematically compared in relation as a function of six different food-related risks and four different targets. Selected food-related risks represent both voluntary and involuntary exposure and nutritional, microbiological, and chemical risks, and the targets are the individual him/herself, retail, manufacturing industry, and society. We did not form hypotheses concerning the patterns of perceived responsibility because previous research has provided mixed findings concerning personal vs. other targets’ responsibility (e.g. Redmond & Griffith, 2004a,b). Further, we examine whether risk characteristics predict responsibility judgments. We hypothesize that judgments of personal controllability positively predict judgments of personal responsibility and that all responsibility judgments are positively predicted by judgments of risk scariness, likelihood to self, and being man-made.
Measures Risk type. Six types of food-related risks were used: (1) the risk of cancer as a result of receiving dioxin through eating fish; (2) the risk of cardiovascular diseases as a result of high-fat diet; (3) the risk of food poisoning as a result of eating beef infected with EHECbacteria because of mishandling of the meat in the course of butchery; (4) the possible, unknown risks of genetically modified foods; (5) the possible, unknown risks of cholesterol-lowering vegetable sterols used in certain functional foods; and (6) the risk of a new type of Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease (CJD) as a result of eating beef infected with bovine spongiform encephalitis. Participants were provided with brief descriptions of the risk types before the rating scales (for these descriptions, see Leikas et al., 2007). Responsibility judgments. Judged responsibility of four different targets was measured. The targets were the respondent her/himself (personal responsibility), industry, retail, and society. Participants rated on seven-point scales how much each target was responsible for each risk (1 = not at all; 7 = completely). Risk characteristics. Participants rated on seven-point scales how scary (1 = not at all, 7 = very), natural vs. man-made (1 = occurs naturally, 7 = is caused by man), likely to happen to them (1 = very unlikely to me, 7 = very likely to me), and personally controllable (1 = I cannot control my exposure to the risk at all, 7 = I can totally control my exposure to the risk). Participants were instructed to make the judgments based on ‘‘how they experienced’’ the risk in question. Results The effects of risk type and target on responsibility judgments were first analyzed by a 6 (risk type) 4 (target) repeated measures ANOVA. The results showed significant effects of both risk type (F(5, 6345) = 264.89, p < .001) and target (F(3, 3807) = 784.74, p < .001), as well as a highly significant interaction between risk type and target, F(15, 19035) = 704.98, p < .001. This interaction is illustrated in Fig. 1. All responsibility judgments were significantly different from each other at the p < .001 level within each risk type. For cancer, industry was considered as most responsible, followed by society. Personal responsibility was close to the scale midpoint, and retail’s responsibility was lowest. For the CVD risk, participants’ own responsibility was rated highest, followed by industry, society, and retail, in this order. For the risk of food poisoning, industry was considered to be highly responsible, followed by retail, society, and personal responsibility. For the potential risks of genetically
Method Participants Participants were members of an internet panel of a marketing research company (Taloustutkimus Oy). The members of this panel consist of a representative sample of Finnish adult internet users. Finnish adult internet users represent Finnish population well except that they are slightly more educated than Finnish adult population on average. Participants were recruited by an e-mail that asked respondents to participate in a food-related questionnaire study. As compensation, participants received a lottery ticket with gift vouchers as prizes. The e-mail contained a link to an internet questionnaire containing all the measures. By clicking the link, those willing to participate accessed the questionnaire. The email was originally sent to 2540 members of the panel, 50% of whom agreed to participate, leaving us with a final sample of 1270 participants. For the demographic characteristics of participants, see Leikas, Lindeman, Roininen, and La¨hteenma¨ki (2007).
Fig. 1. Responsibility judgments as a function of risk and target. CVD = risk of cardiovascular disease; GMF = risks of genetically modified foods; CJD = risk of Creutzfeld–Jacob disease.
S. Leikas et al. / Appetite 53 (2009) 123–126
modified food, responsibility judgments were highest for industry and society, average for retail, whereas judgments of personal responsibility were relatively low. For the risks of vegetable sterols, the pattern was similar to that found for genetically modified food. For CJD, personal responsibility was again low. Industry’s responsibility was highest, followed by those of society’s and retail’s (see Fig. 1). Next, we investigated whether and how the risk characteristics predicted different responsibility judgments. A series of multiple regression analyses were conducted in which each responsibility judgment (within each risk type) was regressed on perceived scariness, being man-made, likelihood to self, and controllability. The results are presented in Table 1. Because we conducted a large number of analyses (24) on the same database, we adjusted the significance level by using a Bonferroni correction. The adjusted significance level was .05/24 = .002. As predicted, judged personal controllability positively predicted judgments of personal responsibility for all risks, especially strongly for food poisoning. Partly in line with our hypothesis, judgments of whether the risk was man-made positively predicted judgments of industry’s responsibility. The judgments of the risk being man-made also positively predicted judgments of retail’s and society’s responsibility, although less strongly. An exception to this pattern was CVD, for which being man-made slightly predicted personal responsibility, but not other targets’ responsibility. Finally, contrary to our hypothesis, judgments of scariness and likelihood to self did not generally predict any responsibility judgments except, very weakly, non-personal targets’ responsibility for CVD and genetically modified food risks.
Table 1 Results of multiple regression analyses predicting responsibility judgments from risk characteristics (N = 1270). Risk type
Responsibility target Personal
Industry
Retail
Society
Cancer Scariness Man-made Likelihood to self Controllability
.02 .01 .07 .36*
.05 .30* .06 .06
.15* .12* .09 .08
.07 .31* .05 .10*
CVD Scariness Man-made Likelihood to self Controllability
.03 .17* .06 .43*
.16* .07 .00 .02
.13* .02 .04 .05
.13* .02 .02 .00
Food poisoning Scariness Man-made Likelihood to self Controllability
.00 .01 .05 .64*
.02 .32* .01 .17*
.03 .12* .10* .06
.07 .13* .08 .06
Genetically modified food Scariness Man-made Likelihood to self Controllability
.06 .01 .01 .47*
.14* .36* .06 .01
.16* .19* .07 .04
.16* .26* .10* .04
Vegetable sterols Scariness Man-made Likelihood to self Controllability
.04 .05 .04 .48*
.04 .38* .04 .04
.10* .20* .13* .03
.15* .24* .05 .02
CJD Scariness Man-made Likelihood to self Controllability
.02 .02 .08 .53*
.08 .31* .05 .03
.12* .19* .01 .13*
.12* .25* .04 .06
Note: Figures are standardized regression coefficients (bs). * p < .001.
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Discussion The results of the present study indicated that people’s food risk responsibility judgments vary by risk type and by the target of judgments. Further, judgments of certain risk characteristics were distinctively associated with food risk responsibility judgments concerning different targets. The results have implications for understanding people’s views on food risk responsibility and for health education. First, how is food risk responsibility distributed across different targets for different risks? According to the results, there are two patterns of responsibility. For all other risks but the CVD, participants considered industry to be highly responsible, followed by society and retail, but allocating lower personal responsibility. Perceived responsibility pattern for CVD was completely different. Clearly highest responsibility was assigned to the individual him or herself. The most pronounced difference between CVD and the other risks seems to be that cardiovascular disease represents a voluntary and personally controllable risk (Frewer, Shepherd, & Sparks, 1994), and making the right food choices for heart health is a constant message in health education (Casagrande, Wang, Anderson, & Gary, 2007; Pomerlau, Lock, Knai, & McKee, 2005), thus contributing to the perceived controllability of CVD. Hence, the results showed that people assume personal responsibility for a personally controllable risk, but not for other types of risks. Along with differences in personal vs. non-personal targets’ responsibility, another important risk type effect in responsibility judgments was that consumers viewed industry and retail quite differently when it comes to the responsibility in the food production chain. Industry was held most strongly responsible and retail’s responsibility was considered to be relatively low. It seems possible that this reflects consumers’ perceived controllability over risks. That is, consumers do not have a direct choice over the selection of the food stores, but they do have direct control over the products they pick up from shelves to their shopping baskets. Hence, industry and, to some extent, society, are viewed as responsible for what is produced and what is allowed to produce. In contrast, retail’s responsibility may be lowered because consumers believe that after the products have entered the food stores, they are able to personally control their exposure to the potential risks these products may carry through consumer choices. In sum, the results pertaining to risk type shed light on conflicting previous findings concerning personal vs. other targets’ responsibility (Redmond & Griffith, 2004a,b; van Kleef et al., 2006). Some previous research has indicated that consumers assume high personal responsibility for food risks (Redmond & Griffith, 2004b), whereas some other studies have suggested that consumers’ find food manufacturers to be ultimately responsible for food risks (van Kleef et al., 2006), at least for microbial risks (Redmond & Griffith, 2004a). The present results showed that consumers assume high personal responsibility for a voluntary, controllable, nutritional risk, whereas blaming industry and society for food risks is prevalent among consumers in Finland when it comes to microbial and chemical risks, and risks related to new technologies (e.g. genetic modification of foods). Retailers, in contrast, are not viewed as highly responsible. Hence, in future studies on food risk responsibility judgments, it would be important to take into account both risk type and the target of responsibility to receive an accurate picture of these judgments. People have a tendency to view themselves as less susceptible to health risks than others (Klein & Helweg-Larsen, 2002; Weinstein, 1989), but research on personal responsibility has shown that assuming higher personal responsibility is related to better health habits (e.g. Rothman et al., 1993). Hence, the present results according to which perceived personal controllability of a food risk strongly predict higher personal responsibility judgments across
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food risk types are of importance from the perspective of health education. Showing people that they can control food risks could lead to higher assumed personal responsibility and, hence, to better health behavior in the food risk domain. For instance, higher perceived controllability of food poisoning via EHEC-bacteria could lead to higher assumed personal responsibility and, thus, to better meat-handling practices in the home kitchen. Further, increasing people’s personal controllability for food risks could, via heightened personal responsibility, reduce avoidance coping (e.g. denial) in the food risk domain (Voth & Sirois, 2009). This could be of particular importance in relation to the perceptions of genetically modified foods because of the extremely negative reactions these foods sometimes evoke in consumers (e.g. Frewer, 1999; Saba, Moles, & Frewer, 1998). Such highly negative, emotionally laden attitudes could lead to avoidance coping that can be reduced by increasing personal responsibility (Voth & Sirois, 2009). The strong relation between personal controllability and responsibility sheds further light on the discrepancies between previous research and the present results. When asked generally about food risk responsibility, people seem to assume that they are highly responsible (Redmond & Griffith, 2004a; van Kleef et al., 2006). This may be because people experience generally high personal controllability due to the illusion of control (McKenna, 1993). However, according to the present results, even for risks generally viewed as uncontrollable, the more personally controllable people viewed these risks, the higher they viewed their personal responsibility for these risks. Therefore, the positive relation between personal controllability and personal responsibility also seems to be evident for risks that are generally viewed as uncontrollable. Heightening perceived personal controllability is thus likely to increase people’s perceived personal responsibility even for risks that are viewed as difficult to control personally. The more the risk was considered to be man-made rather than naturally occurring the more responsibility was assigned to industry, society, and retail—i.e., to all institutional, non-personal targets, with one exception: for cardiovascular disease, the perception that CVD is man-made was related to personal responsibility but not to other targets’ responsibility. Hence, the more the risk is viewed as manmade, the higher the perceived responsibility of the target found as responsible. In other words, if industry is found responsible for a certain risk, those who think that this risk is man-made assign even more responsibility to industry. In contrast, when personal responsibility for the risk is high, those who think that the risk in question is man-made find their personal responsibility even higher. It seems likely that these results are due to the relation between being man-made and being controllable. Man-made risks can be controlled for; therefore, whoever is responsible is even more to blame because they could have controlled the risk. From another angle, the results could also reflect the fact that for naturally occurring risks, there may not be an available culpable party to blame. Interestingly, risk scariness and risk likelihood judgments were only very weakly related to the responsibility judgments concerning non-personal targets, and not at all with personal responsibility. Hence, even if people are afraid of the risk and consider it likely, they do not blame external targets more or assume high personal responsibility. This suggests that there is only very weak outcome bias (Baron & Hershey, 1988) in the food risk domain, at least when severity is assessed as an individual difference variable. A potential limitation for the present study was the lack of government as a potential culprit. The target ‘‘society’’ was meant to refer to governmental institutions, but also to Finnish people as a community. It is plausible, however, that consumers attribute responsibility for some food risks specifically to government. If so, our results could not incorporate these attributions. Taken together, the present study was the first to systematically explore people’s responsibility judgments of different risk types in
relation to different targets and to different risk characteristics at the same time. The results suggested that the answer to the question ‘‘who is considered to be responsible for food risks’’ is ‘‘it depends’’. Who is found responsible is strongly influenced by risk type, and the amount of responsibility allocated to the target found responsible is influenced by risk characteristics. Higher perceived personal controllability predicts higher personal responsibility, and the more the risk is viewed as man-made, the more those who are found responsible are blamed. Acknowledgements This study was conducted as a part of a research project ‘‘Consumer perception of food-related risks’’ administered by VTT Technical Research Center and funded by the Finnish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. We are grateful to Prof. Riitta Maijala and Research scientist Satu Lievonen (MSc) from the National Veterinary and Food Research Institute of Finland and to Research manager, Dr. Eeva-Liisa Ryha¨nen from the MTT Agrifood Research Finland for their help in creating the risk materials. The preparation of the manuscript was supported by the Graduate School of Psychology of Finland. References Baron, J., & Hershey, J. C. (1988). Outcome bias in decision evaluation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 569–579. Casagrande, S. S., Wang, Y., Anderson, C., & Gary, T. L. (2007). Have Americans increased their fruit and vegetable intake. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 32, 257– 263. Fife-Schaw, C., & Rowe, G. (1996). Public perceptions of everyday food hazards: a psychometric study. Risk Analysis, 16, 487–500. Frewer, L. (1999). Public perceptions of genetically modified foods in Europe. Journal of Commercial Biotechnology, 6, 108–115. Frewer, L. J., Shepherd, R., & Sparks, P. (1994). The interrelationship between perceived knowledge, control and risk associated with a range of food-related hazards targeted at the individual, other people and society. Journal of Food Safety, 14, 19–40. Janz, N. K., & Becker, M. H. (1984). The health belief model: a decade later. Health Education Quarterly, 11, 1–47. Jenner, E. A., Watson, P. W. B., Miller, L., Jones, F., & Scott, G. M. (2002). Explaining hand hygiene practice: an extended application of the Theory of Planned Behaviour. Psychology, Health & Medicine, 7, 311–326. Klein, C. T. F., & Helweg-Larsen, M. (2002). Perceived control and the optimistic bias: a meta-analytic review. Psychology and Health, 17, 437–446. Leikas, S., Lindeman, M., Roininen, K., & La¨hteenma¨ki, L. (2007). Food risk perceptions, gender, and individual differences in avoidance and approach motivation, intuitive and analytic thinking styles, and anxiety. Appetite, 48, 232–240. McKenna, F. P. (1993). It won’t happen to me: unrealistic optimism or illusion of control? British Journal of Psychology, 84, 39–50. Miles, S., & Scaife, V. (2003). Optimistic bias and food. Nutrition Research Reviews, 16, 3– 19. Pomerlau, J., Lock, K., Knai, C., & McKee, M. (2005). Interventions designed to increased adult fruit and vegetable intake can be effective: a systematic view on the literature. Journal of Nutrition, 135, 2486–2495. Redmond, E. C., & Griffith, C. J. (2004a). Consumer attitudes and perceptions towards microbial food safety in the domestic kitchen. Journal of Food Safety, 24, 169–194. Redmond, E. C., & Griffith, C. J. (2004b). Consumer perceptions of food safety risk, control and responsibility. Appetite, 43, 309–313. Rothman, A. J., Salovey, P., Turvey, C., & Fishkin, S. A. (1993). Attributions of responsibility and persuasion: increasing mammography utilization among women over 40 with an internally oriented message. Health Psychology, 12, 39–47. Saba, A., Moles, A., & Frewer, L. (1998). Public concerns about general and specific applications of genetic engineering: a comparative study between the UK and Italy. Journal of Nutrition and Food Science, 28, 19–29. Slovic, P. (1988). Perception of risk. Science, 236, 280–285. Sparks, P., & Shepherd, R. (1994). Public perceptions of the potential hazards associated with food production and food consumption: an empirical study. Risk Analysis, 14, 799–806. van Kleef, E., Frewer, L. J., Chryssochoidis, G. M., Houghton, J. R., Korzen-Bohr, S., Krystallis, T., Lassen, J., Pfenning, U., & Rowe, G. (2006). Perceptions of food risk management among key stakeholders: results from a cross-European study. Appetite, 47, 46–63. Voth, J., & Sirois, F. M. (2009). The role of self-blame and responsibility in adjustment to inflammatory bowel disease. Rehabilitation Psychology, 54, 99–108. Weiner, B. (1996). Searching for order in social motivation. Psychological Inquiry, 7, 199–216. Weinstein, N. D. (1989). Optimistic biases about personal risks. Science, 246, 1232– 1233.
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Appetite journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/appet
Short communication
Who is responsible for food risks? The influence of risk type and risk characteristics Sointu Leikas a,*, Marjaana Lindeman a, Katariina Roininen b,1, Liisa La¨hteenma¨ki b,2 a b
University of Helsinki, Department of Psychology, Helsinki, Finland VTT Technical Research Centre, Finland
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Article history: Received 6 July 2008 Received in revised form 8 March 2009 Accepted 2 May 2009
The influence of food risk type and risk characteristics on food risk responsibility judgments was studied. A total of 1270 Finnish consumers judged their personal responsibility and the responsibility of three non-personal targets, industry, retail, and society, in relation to six food-related risks. They also evaluated the risks on several psychometric dimensions. The ratings were gathered via internet questionnaire. Industry and society were considered to be most responsible for all risks but the risk of cardiovascular disease, for which personal responsibility was considered to be highest. Judgments of personal controllability predicted personal responsibility judgments, and unnaturalness judgments predicted non-personal targets’ judged responsibility. Personal responsibility judgments were related to different risk dimensions than judgments of non-personal targets’ responsibility. ß 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Food risk Responsibility Risk characteristics
People have a tendency to view themselves as less vulnerable to food risks than other people in general or less vulnerable than they actually are (Miles & Scaife, 2003; Sparks & Shepherd, 1994; Weinstein, 1989). This optimistic bias is problematic from the perspective of health education given that recognizing own vulnerability to risks is an important determinant of risk-reducing behavior (Janz & Becker, 1984). Optimistic bias is quite prevalent and difficult to counteract; therefore, it is important to find other ways to influence people’s food risk-related behavior. Research from areas other than food risks suggests that assuming higher personal responsibility for health risks increases health behavior. For instance, higher perceived personal responsibility has been shown to predict better hand hygiene behavior among health care workers (Jenner, Watson, Miller, Jones, & Scott, 2002). Furthermore, in a study concerning mammography screening to detect breast cancer, health messages emphasizing personal responsibility increased the perceived personal responsibility in cancer prevention and higher perceived personal responsibility then increased the likelihood of obtaining a mammography (Rothman, Salovey, Turvey, & Fishkin, 1993). In addition, among people with inflammatory bowel syndrome, higher personal responsibility predicts less use of avoidant coping strategies such as denial, emotional and behavioral disengagement, and substance use (Voth & Sirois, 2009). Hence, assuming higher personal
* Corresponding author. E-mail address: sointu.leikas@helsinki.fi (S. Leikas). 1 Katariina Roininen is now at Taloustutkimus Oy, Helsinki, Finland. 2 Liisa La¨hteenma¨ki is now at MAPP & Department of Marketing and Statistics, Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus University, A˚rhus, Denmark. 0195-6663/$ – see front matter ß 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2009.05.003
responsibility for food risks could make people to adopt healthy habits and better coping strategies to deal with food risks. Besides consumers themselves, there are other targets potentially responsible for food risks. Previous research has not systematically compared people’s responsibility judgments towards different targets. Often, only one target, such as respondent herself, is included. Hence, it is somewhat unclear how responsibility is distributed across different agents in the food production chain, such as manufacturing industry, retail, consumers, and society in general. Previous results concerning responsibility of food risks have been mixed. Some studies suggest that people assume very high personal responsibility of their own food safety (Redmond & Griffith, 2004b; van Kleef et al., 2006). However, some other studies indicate that people consider food manufacturers to be responsible for food risks (Redmond & Griffith, 2004a). These conflicting findings may be due to the risk types used in these studies. Some food risks may evoke thoughts about own responsibility, whereas other risks may evoke thoughts about external responsibility. For instance, Redmond and Griffith (2004a) asked about microbial food safety, and found that a majority of respondents considered food manufacturers to be ‘‘ultimately responsible’’ for microbial risks. However, when asked about food risk-related responsibility in general (Redmond & Griffith, 2004b; van Kleef et al., 2006), most people considered themselves as highly responsible. Hence, it seems that food manufacturers are considered to be responsible for microbial risks, but that consumers probably view themselves as responsible for some other risks. However, it is not clear which risks. Furthermore, it is not clear whether food industry or some other targets are viewed as responsible also for some other types of risks as microbial risks. To
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clarify these issues, it seems desirable to simultaneously examine people’s responsibility judgments related to different types of risks. While the nature of the food risk may affect responsibility judgments generally, people’s subjective evaluations of the risk could also affect them. The psychometric paradigm has identified several evaluative dimensions that people use to assess risks (Slovic, 1988). These risk characteristics are also used to evaluate food risks (Fife-Schaw & Rowe, 1996; Sparks & Shepherd, 1994). From the perspective of responsibility judgments, certain risk characteristics seem especially important. First, people’s assessments of how ‘‘dreadful’’ (Slovic, 1988), i.e., how scary and likely the risk is may affect their responsibility judgments, as people usually assign more responsibility to potential targets in the case of severe (as compared to mild) outcomes (Baron & Hershey, 1988). Hence, judgments of risk scariness and likelihood may be positively related to responsibility judgments towards all targets. Furthermore, research based on attribution theory has shown that judgments of controllability are strongly related to judgments of responsibility (see Weiner, 1996). According to the psychometric paradigm, when faced with a food risk, people assess how personally controllable it is as well as whether it is man-made or naturally occurring (Fife-Schaw & Rowe, 1996). Judgments of personal responsibility could be affected by judgments of the risk’s personal controllability given that previous research has shown that personal controllability judgments concerning food risks in general are related to personal responsibility judgments of food risks in general (Redmond & Griffith, 2004b), but it seems important to investigate whether this is also the case when it comes to specific risks. Further, because manmade risks are likely to be viewed as more controllable than naturally occurring risks, judgments of the risk being man-made could affect responsibility judgments of all targets. In the present study, people’s responsibility judgments are systematically compared in relation as a function of six different food-related risks and four different targets. Selected food-related risks represent both voluntary and involuntary exposure and nutritional, microbiological, and chemical risks, and the targets are the individual him/herself, retail, manufacturing industry, and society. We did not form hypotheses concerning the patterns of perceived responsibility because previous research has provided mixed findings concerning personal vs. other targets’ responsibility (e.g. Redmond & Griffith, 2004a,b). Further, we examine whether risk characteristics predict responsibility judgments. We hypothesize that judgments of personal controllability positively predict judgments of personal responsibility and that all responsibility judgments are positively predicted by judgments of risk scariness, likelihood to self, and being man-made.
Measures Risk type. Six types of food-related risks were used: (1) the risk of cancer as a result of receiving dioxin through eating fish; (2) the risk of cardiovascular diseases as a result of high-fat diet; (3) the risk of food poisoning as a result of eating beef infected with EHECbacteria because of mishandling of the meat in the course of butchery; (4) the possible, unknown risks of genetically modified foods; (5) the possible, unknown risks of cholesterol-lowering vegetable sterols used in certain functional foods; and (6) the risk of a new type of Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease (CJD) as a result of eating beef infected with bovine spongiform encephalitis. Participants were provided with brief descriptions of the risk types before the rating scales (for these descriptions, see Leikas et al., 2007). Responsibility judgments. Judged responsibility of four different targets was measured. The targets were the respondent her/himself (personal responsibility), industry, retail, and society. Participants rated on seven-point scales how much each target was responsible for each risk (1 = not at all; 7 = completely). Risk characteristics. Participants rated on seven-point scales how scary (1 = not at all, 7 = very), natural vs. man-made (1 = occurs naturally, 7 = is caused by man), likely to happen to them (1 = very unlikely to me, 7 = very likely to me), and personally controllable (1 = I cannot control my exposure to the risk at all, 7 = I can totally control my exposure to the risk). Participants were instructed to make the judgments based on ‘‘how they experienced’’ the risk in question. Results The effects of risk type and target on responsibility judgments were first analyzed by a 6 (risk type) 4 (target) repeated measures ANOVA. The results showed significant effects of both risk type (F(5, 6345) = 264.89, p < .001) and target (F(3, 3807) = 784.74, p < .001), as well as a highly significant interaction between risk type and target, F(15, 19035) = 704.98, p < .001. This interaction is illustrated in Fig. 1. All responsibility judgments were significantly different from each other at the p < .001 level within each risk type. For cancer, industry was considered as most responsible, followed by society. Personal responsibility was close to the scale midpoint, and retail’s responsibility was lowest. For the CVD risk, participants’ own responsibility was rated highest, followed by industry, society, and retail, in this order. For the risk of food poisoning, industry was considered to be highly responsible, followed by retail, society, and personal responsibility. For the potential risks of genetically
Method Participants Participants were members of an internet panel of a marketing research company (Taloustutkimus Oy). The members of this panel consist of a representative sample of Finnish adult internet users. Finnish adult internet users represent Finnish population well except that they are slightly more educated than Finnish adult population on average. Participants were recruited by an e-mail that asked respondents to participate in a food-related questionnaire study. As compensation, participants received a lottery ticket with gift vouchers as prizes. The e-mail contained a link to an internet questionnaire containing all the measures. By clicking the link, those willing to participate accessed the questionnaire. The email was originally sent to 2540 members of the panel, 50% of whom agreed to participate, leaving us with a final sample of 1270 participants. For the demographic characteristics of participants, see Leikas, Lindeman, Roininen, and La¨hteenma¨ki (2007).
Fig. 1. Responsibility judgments as a function of risk and target. CVD = risk of cardiovascular disease; GMF = risks of genetically modified foods; CJD = risk of Creutzfeld–Jacob disease.
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modified food, responsibility judgments were highest for industry and society, average for retail, whereas judgments of personal responsibility were relatively low. For the risks of vegetable sterols, the pattern was similar to that found for genetically modified food. For CJD, personal responsibility was again low. Industry’s responsibility was highest, followed by those of society’s and retail’s (see Fig. 1). Next, we investigated whether and how the risk characteristics predicted different responsibility judgments. A series of multiple regression analyses were conducted in which each responsibility judgment (within each risk type) was regressed on perceived scariness, being man-made, likelihood to self, and controllability. The results are presented in Table 1. Because we conducted a large number of analyses (24) on the same database, we adjusted the significance level by using a Bonferroni correction. The adjusted significance level was .05/24 = .002. As predicted, judged personal controllability positively predicted judgments of personal responsibility for all risks, especially strongly for food poisoning. Partly in line with our hypothesis, judgments of whether the risk was man-made positively predicted judgments of industry’s responsibility. The judgments of the risk being man-made also positively predicted judgments of retail’s and society’s responsibility, although less strongly. An exception to this pattern was CVD, for which being man-made slightly predicted personal responsibility, but not other targets’ responsibility. Finally, contrary to our hypothesis, judgments of scariness and likelihood to self did not generally predict any responsibility judgments except, very weakly, non-personal targets’ responsibility for CVD and genetically modified food risks.
Table 1 Results of multiple regression analyses predicting responsibility judgments from risk characteristics (N = 1270). Risk type
Responsibility target Personal
Industry
Retail
Society
Cancer Scariness Man-made Likelihood to self Controllability
.02 .01 .07 .36*
.05 .30* .06 .06
.15* .12* .09 .08
.07 .31* .05 .10*
CVD Scariness Man-made Likelihood to self Controllability
.03 .17* .06 .43*
.16* .07 .00 .02
.13* .02 .04 .05
.13* .02 .02 .00
Food poisoning Scariness Man-made Likelihood to self Controllability
.00 .01 .05 .64*
.02 .32* .01 .17*
.03 .12* .10* .06
.07 .13* .08 .06
Genetically modified food Scariness Man-made Likelihood to self Controllability
.06 .01 .01 .47*
.14* .36* .06 .01
.16* .19* .07 .04
.16* .26* .10* .04
Vegetable sterols Scariness Man-made Likelihood to self Controllability
.04 .05 .04 .48*
.04 .38* .04 .04
.10* .20* .13* .03
.15* .24* .05 .02
CJD Scariness Man-made Likelihood to self Controllability
.02 .02 .08 .53*
.08 .31* .05 .03
.12* .19* .01 .13*
.12* .25* .04 .06
Note: Figures are standardized regression coefficients (bs). * p < .001.
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Discussion The results of the present study indicated that people’s food risk responsibility judgments vary by risk type and by the target of judgments. Further, judgments of certain risk characteristics were distinctively associated with food risk responsibility judgments concerning different targets. The results have implications for understanding people’s views on food risk responsibility and for health education. First, how is food risk responsibility distributed across different targets for different risks? According to the results, there are two patterns of responsibility. For all other risks but the CVD, participants considered industry to be highly responsible, followed by society and retail, but allocating lower personal responsibility. Perceived responsibility pattern for CVD was completely different. Clearly highest responsibility was assigned to the individual him or herself. The most pronounced difference between CVD and the other risks seems to be that cardiovascular disease represents a voluntary and personally controllable risk (Frewer, Shepherd, & Sparks, 1994), and making the right food choices for heart health is a constant message in health education (Casagrande, Wang, Anderson, & Gary, 2007; Pomerlau, Lock, Knai, & McKee, 2005), thus contributing to the perceived controllability of CVD. Hence, the results showed that people assume personal responsibility for a personally controllable risk, but not for other types of risks. Along with differences in personal vs. non-personal targets’ responsibility, another important risk type effect in responsibility judgments was that consumers viewed industry and retail quite differently when it comes to the responsibility in the food production chain. Industry was held most strongly responsible and retail’s responsibility was considered to be relatively low. It seems possible that this reflects consumers’ perceived controllability over risks. That is, consumers do not have a direct choice over the selection of the food stores, but they do have direct control over the products they pick up from shelves to their shopping baskets. Hence, industry and, to some extent, society, are viewed as responsible for what is produced and what is allowed to produce. In contrast, retail’s responsibility may be lowered because consumers believe that after the products have entered the food stores, they are able to personally control their exposure to the potential risks these products may carry through consumer choices. In sum, the results pertaining to risk type shed light on conflicting previous findings concerning personal vs. other targets’ responsibility (Redmond & Griffith, 2004a,b; van Kleef et al., 2006). Some previous research has indicated that consumers assume high personal responsibility for food risks (Redmond & Griffith, 2004b), whereas some other studies have suggested that consumers’ find food manufacturers to be ultimately responsible for food risks (van Kleef et al., 2006), at least for microbial risks (Redmond & Griffith, 2004a). The present results showed that consumers assume high personal responsibility for a voluntary, controllable, nutritional risk, whereas blaming industry and society for food risks is prevalent among consumers in Finland when it comes to microbial and chemical risks, and risks related to new technologies (e.g. genetic modification of foods). Retailers, in contrast, are not viewed as highly responsible. Hence, in future studies on food risk responsibility judgments, it would be important to take into account both risk type and the target of responsibility to receive an accurate picture of these judgments. People have a tendency to view themselves as less susceptible to health risks than others (Klein & Helweg-Larsen, 2002; Weinstein, 1989), but research on personal responsibility has shown that assuming higher personal responsibility is related to better health habits (e.g. Rothman et al., 1993). Hence, the present results according to which perceived personal controllability of a food risk strongly predict higher personal responsibility judgments across
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food risk types are of importance from the perspective of health education. Showing people that they can control food risks could lead to higher assumed personal responsibility and, hence, to better health behavior in the food risk domain. For instance, higher perceived controllability of food poisoning via EHEC-bacteria could lead to higher assumed personal responsibility and, thus, to better meat-handling practices in the home kitchen. Further, increasing people’s personal controllability for food risks could, via heightened personal responsibility, reduce avoidance coping (e.g. denial) in the food risk domain (Voth & Sirois, 2009). This could be of particular importance in relation to the perceptions of genetically modified foods because of the extremely negative reactions these foods sometimes evoke in consumers (e.g. Frewer, 1999; Saba, Moles, & Frewer, 1998). Such highly negative, emotionally laden attitudes could lead to avoidance coping that can be reduced by increasing personal responsibility (Voth & Sirois, 2009). The strong relation between personal controllability and responsibility sheds further light on the discrepancies between previous research and the present results. When asked generally about food risk responsibility, people seem to assume that they are highly responsible (Redmond & Griffith, 2004a; van Kleef et al., 2006). This may be because people experience generally high personal controllability due to the illusion of control (McKenna, 1993). However, according to the present results, even for risks generally viewed as uncontrollable, the more personally controllable people viewed these risks, the higher they viewed their personal responsibility for these risks. Therefore, the positive relation between personal controllability and personal responsibility also seems to be evident for risks that are generally viewed as uncontrollable. Heightening perceived personal controllability is thus likely to increase people’s perceived personal responsibility even for risks that are viewed as difficult to control personally. The more the risk was considered to be man-made rather than naturally occurring the more responsibility was assigned to industry, society, and retail—i.e., to all institutional, non-personal targets, with one exception: for cardiovascular disease, the perception that CVD is man-made was related to personal responsibility but not to other targets’ responsibility. Hence, the more the risk is viewed as manmade, the higher the perceived responsibility of the target found as responsible. In other words, if industry is found responsible for a certain risk, those who think that this risk is man-made assign even more responsibility to industry. In contrast, when personal responsibility for the risk is high, those who think that the risk in question is man-made find their personal responsibility even higher. It seems likely that these results are due to the relation between being man-made and being controllable. Man-made risks can be controlled for; therefore, whoever is responsible is even more to blame because they could have controlled the risk. From another angle, the results could also reflect the fact that for naturally occurring risks, there may not be an available culpable party to blame. Interestingly, risk scariness and risk likelihood judgments were only very weakly related to the responsibility judgments concerning non-personal targets, and not at all with personal responsibility. Hence, even if people are afraid of the risk and consider it likely, they do not blame external targets more or assume high personal responsibility. This suggests that there is only very weak outcome bias (Baron & Hershey, 1988) in the food risk domain, at least when severity is assessed as an individual difference variable. A potential limitation for the present study was the lack of government as a potential culprit. The target ‘‘society’’ was meant to refer to governmental institutions, but also to Finnish people as a community. It is plausible, however, that consumers attribute responsibility for some food risks specifically to government. If so, our results could not incorporate these attributions. Taken together, the present study was the first to systematically explore people’s responsibility judgments of different risk types in
relation to different targets and to different risk characteristics at the same time. The results suggested that the answer to the question ‘‘who is considered to be responsible for food risks’’ is ‘‘it depends’’. Who is found responsible is strongly influenced by risk type, and the amount of responsibility allocated to the target found responsible is influenced by risk characteristics. Higher perceived personal controllability predicts higher personal responsibility, and the more the risk is viewed as man-made, the more those who are found responsible are blamed. Acknowledgements This study was conducted as a part of a research project ‘‘Consumer perception of food-related risks’’ administered by VTT Technical Research Center and funded by the Finnish Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. We are grateful to Prof. Riitta Maijala and Research scientist Satu Lievonen (MSc) from the National Veterinary and Food Research Institute of Finland and to Research manager, Dr. Eeva-Liisa Ryha¨nen from the MTT Agrifood Research Finland for their help in creating the risk materials. The preparation of the manuscript was supported by the Graduate School of Psychology of Finland. References Baron, J., & Hershey, J. C. (1988). Outcome bias in decision evaluation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 569–579. Casagrande, S. S., Wang, Y., Anderson, C., & Gary, T. L. (2007). Have Americans increased their fruit and vegetable intake. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 32, 257– 263. Fife-Schaw, C., & Rowe, G. (1996). Public perceptions of everyday food hazards: a psychometric study. Risk Analysis, 16, 487–500. Frewer, L. (1999). Public perceptions of genetically modified foods in Europe. Journal of Commercial Biotechnology, 6, 108–115. Frewer, L. J., Shepherd, R., & Sparks, P. (1994). The interrelationship between perceived knowledge, control and risk associated with a range of food-related hazards targeted at the individual, other people and society. Journal of Food Safety, 14, 19–40. Janz, N. K., & Becker, M. H. (1984). The health belief model: a decade later. Health Education Quarterly, 11, 1–47. Jenner, E. A., Watson, P. W. B., Miller, L., Jones, F., & Scott, G. M. (2002). Explaining hand hygiene practice: an extended application of the Theory of Planned Behaviour. Psychology, Health & Medicine, 7, 311–326. Klein, C. T. F., & Helweg-Larsen, M. (2002). Perceived control and the optimistic bias: a meta-analytic review. Psychology and Health, 17, 437–446. Leikas, S., Lindeman, M., Roininen, K., & La¨hteenma¨ki, L. (2007). Food risk perceptions, gender, and individual differences in avoidance and approach motivation, intuitive and analytic thinking styles, and anxiety. Appetite, 48, 232–240. McKenna, F. P. (1993). It won’t happen to me: unrealistic optimism or illusion of control? British Journal of Psychology, 84, 39–50. Miles, S., & Scaife, V. (2003). Optimistic bias and food. Nutrition Research Reviews, 16, 3– 19. Pomerlau, J., Lock, K., Knai, C., & McKee, M. (2005). Interventions designed to increased adult fruit and vegetable intake can be effective: a systematic view on the literature. Journal of Nutrition, 135, 2486–2495. Redmond, E. C., & Griffith, C. J. (2004a). Consumer attitudes and perceptions towards microbial food safety in the domestic kitchen. Journal of Food Safety, 24, 169–194. Redmond, E. C., & Griffith, C. J. (2004b). Consumer perceptions of food safety risk, control and responsibility. Appetite, 43, 309–313. Rothman, A. J., Salovey, P., Turvey, C., & Fishkin, S. A. (1993). Attributions of responsibility and persuasion: increasing mammography utilization among women over 40 with an internally oriented message. Health Psychology, 12, 39–47. Saba, A., Moles, A., & Frewer, L. (1998). Public concerns about general and specific applications of genetic engineering: a comparative study between the UK and Italy. Journal of Nutrition and Food Science, 28, 19–29. Slovic, P. (1988). Perception of risk. Science, 236, 280–285. Sparks, P., & Shepherd, R. (1994). Public perceptions of the potential hazards associated with food production and food consumption: an empirical study. Risk Analysis, 14, 799–806. van Kleef, E., Frewer, L. J., Chryssochoidis, G. M., Houghton, J. R., Korzen-Bohr, S., Krystallis, T., Lassen, J., Pfenning, U., & Rowe, G. (2006). Perceptions of food risk management among key stakeholders: results from a cross-European study. Appetite, 47, 46–63. Voth, J., & Sirois, F. M. (2009). The role of self-blame and responsibility in adjustment to inflammatory bowel disease. Rehabilitation Psychology, 54, 99–108. Weiner, B. (1996). Searching for order in social motivation. Psychological Inquiry, 7, 199–216. Weinstein, N. D. (1989). Optimistic biases about personal risks. Science, 246, 1232– 1233.