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Type Journal Article
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Food scares: Reflections and reactions
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Nina Veflen
  • Oddveig Storstad
  • Bendik Samuelsen
  • Solveig Langsrud
  • Therese Hagtvedt
  • Oydis Ueland
  • Frederik Gregersen
Item Subtype Original Work
Refereed Yes
Status Published in final form
Language
  • English
Journal Title International Journal on Food System Dynamics
Publisher CentMa GmbH
Geographical Reach international
ISSN 1869-6945
Volume 8
Number 2
Page Range 155 - 164
Date 2017
Abstract Text The aim of this study is to investigate consumers’ reflections and reactions to a food scare news story. Previous studies indicate that risk communication not always is able to influence people’s behavior and that pre-existing attitudes may influence people’s reactions and reflections. In this study, we investigate how consumers critically reflect and emotionally react to a food scare, here defined as risk communication that spirals public anxiety over food safety incidents, and leads to an unwanted escalation in media attention. In the Fall of 2014, a researcher from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health said in a newspaper interview that she never touched chicken with her bare hands. This interview was the beginning of a media storm, which resulted in a dramatic drop in sales of chicken. In this study, we explore a small group of consumers’ reflections and reactions to this news article. Data from five focus group interviews with Norwegian consumers of chicken were transcribed, content analyzed, and coded, before we conducted a multiple correspondence analysis and a hierarchical cluster analysis. The findings indicate that consumers do reflect when confronted with a food scare story. Some question the research behind the news, others compare the food scare’s danger to other risks. Even though consumers do reflect around the facts in the food scare article, their emotions seem to affect their behavior more systematic than their reflections.
Free access at DOI
Digital Object Identifier 10.18461/ijfsd.v8i2.826
Other Identification Number merlin-id:15130
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