Japanese Public Perceptions of Food-Related Hazards

Hiroko Ohtsubo and Yukiko Yamada

Journal of Risk Research, 2007, vol. 10, issue 6, 805-819

Abstract: In this study the authors conducted a survey in 2003 with two aims: to map out the Japanese general public's perceptions of food-related hazards and foodstuffs based on the psychometric paradigm and to compare the results with those of the work by Sparks and Shepherd (1994) and Fife-Schaw and Rowe (1996), who figured the risk perception maps of the UK public; and to classify the Japanese public into some clusters according to their interests and concerns about food related issues and compare the perceptions of food-related hazards among the clusters. Three thousand questionnaires were sent by mail to randomly chosen citizens residing around Tokyo, and 878 valid responses were returned (adjusted response rate = 29.5%). Ten food-related hazards and 14 kinds of risk characteristics were used to assess their perceptions of risk, and questions about their levels of interests and/or concerns about eating, nutrition, health and food safety were asked in order to categorize the respondents into clusters. The perceptions of food-related hazards of the Japanese general public were quite similar to those of the UK public. The only exceptions appeared to be the perceptions of food additives, irradiated foods and GMOs. The Japanese public relatively regarded them as more hazardous than the UK public. Perceptions of each cluster were also similar; only Cluster 1 (with low interest and low anxiety) perceived familiar ones (e.g., food additives) to be less hazardous. The results here were based on categorical data and additional studies are necessary to obtain quantitative data for further elaboration of these results.

Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13669870701342777 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:10:y:2007:i:6:p:805-819

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJRR20

DOI: 10.1080/13669870701342777

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Risk Research is currently edited by Bryan MacGregor

More articles in Journal of Risk Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().