Food Safety Trust, Risk Perception, and Consumers’ Response to Company Trust Repair Actions in Food Recall Crises

Chuanhui Liao, Yu Luo and Weiwei Zhu
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Chuanhui Liao: School of Economics and Management, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang 621010, China
Yu Luo: School of Economics and Management, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang 621010, China
Weiwei Zhu: School of Marxism, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei 230009, China

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 4, 1-16

Abstract: Food recalls have severe impacts on the operation, reputation, and even the survival of a recalling company involved in a crisis, with consumer trust violation being the immediate threat to the recalling firm. The involved firms adopt trust repair strategies and release messages relevant to these actions to the public. In this research, we developed a conceptual model to analyze consumers’ general responses to the food recall, and we then compared the effect of two types of consumer trust repair strategies, i.e., self-sanction and information-sharing. The results show that consumer food safety trust has negative impacts on consumers’ protective behavioral intention during a food recall crisis. In the scientific-evidence sharing group, consumers have a higher risk perception, coping appraisal efficacy, information-seeking tendency, and protection behavioral intention. However, consumers’ food safety trust fails to predict protection behavioral intention because scientific-evidence actions can either be regarded as an explanation and self-serving, or as useful facts and solutions. Self-sanction actions overcome the disadvantages of information-sharing actions, but consumers still require information on facts of and solutions to the crisis. Therefore, it is recommended that recalling firms combine these two strategies in the case of consumer trust repair in food recall crises. Furthermore, the involved firms are encouraged to employ a third party to release the scientific evidence.

Keywords: consumer trust repair actions; risk perception; coping-appraisal perception; self-sanction; information-sharing; protective behavioral intention (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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