Food safety from consumer perspective: Consumer confidence in food safety

Abstract

© 2018 by IGI Global. All rights reserved. Consumer perception is one of the aspects from which food safety can be considered. This view of food safety, named in the literature as subjective safety, does not necessarily correspond to objective food safety and is also considered as not being easily influenced by education of consumers. Having that in mind, the first goal of this chapter is to examine different approaches to food safety and the results of previous research dealing with consumer perspective of food safety. Besides giving broad literature review of the topic, the goal of this chapter is to implement Consumer confidence in food safety scale in Serbian consumer research. The validity, reliability, and one-dimensionality of this scale, which consists of optimism and pessimism (two dimensions of confidence), are tested and determinants of different rating on it are examined. The research from 2016 includes 300 participants in the main survey. Finally, starting from profiling consumers with different levels of general confidence in food safety, managerial recommendations are provided.