Food Scares: Consumer Perception, Risk Communication and Crisis Management

Communication with consumers is one of the most important elements in the effective management and control of food-borne hazards. This is particularly important in crisis situations, for example, during a food scare. During the recent horse meat scandal in Europe, consumers were shocked, food industry shaken and food safety authorities unsure how to react. Unfortunately, only the most general recommendations exist as to what type of crisis communication would be appropriate in such a situation. Many earlier investigations of the evolution of health scares were either limited to individual perceptions of risk or to institutional responses to risk. A lack of cross-disciplinary research has resulted in a failure to provide empirical tests of these two approaches together, thereby severely limiting their applicability and usefulness. The overall purpose of this project was to provide guidelines for best practice regarding risk communication during a crisis. Limitation of previous research was rectified by linking food safety, consumer perception, risk communication and crisis management expertise, resulting in significant advances in the state of the art, and the provision of an effective communication strategy for risk and crisis management. The multi-disciplinarily of the project made it possible to conduct research that generated insights and new knowledge, which was found useful by both scientific scholars and business people. Some of the topics investigated were: 1) consumer responses to food scare information, 2) the influence of social norms on food risk behavior, 3) message form and media types influence on risk message acceptance, 4) how risk information is shared on social media platforms etc. A series of five fully integrated and inter-related work packages (WPs) was conducted and completed. WP1: Perception of food safety issues In this WP, a set of focus groups were conducted among Norwegian consumers of chicken right after an extensive food scare about antibiotic resistant bacteria in chicken dominated the Norwegian press. The study resulted in new insights of how rational/ irrational consumers respond to food scare stories that are perceived to be nothing to fear (if following normal procedure for preparation) by the food authorities. Different patterns were observed. Some reflected and put the information into a larger, more holistic picture, while others got scared and changed their consumption or preparation routines. Some were also not affected by the stories and continued as before WP2: Food safety communication In depth interviews with relevant stakeholders within food research institutes, food authorities, retailers and newspapers, were conducted to uncover what went wrong in the chicken and antibiotic resistant bacteria case. Barriers and best practice for risk communication was gathered and implemented into the Guidelines for Consumer Risk Communication developed in WP5 (e.g. the importance of clear division of labor for communication between the stakeholders and to deliver clear and simple roles for how consumers should behave under crises). WP3 and WP4: Crisis simulation and containment experiments In addition to design and conduct an experiments of how consumers share risk information on social media platforms, a three step survey was conducted to investigate how consumers risk behavior varies under different situations and for different food risks. The results clearly indicate that consumers take lager food risks in situations with high level of social norms (e.g. the likelihood of eating risky food, as a pink, undercooked burger, increases if served by your future parents in law compared to at your own kitchen). The social media experiment was successfully conducted in the spring 2017, but due to the complexity of the study, the results will first be published after the end of the project. WP5: Implementation into a prescriptive risk management approach All the findings from the project was implemented into the ?Guidelines for Consumer Risk Communication? developed in WP5. This guideline is written in Norwegian and tailored towards people communicating food risk to consumers (as food authorities, the food industry, food research institutes, the press etc.). Another important, although indirect, effect of the ScareCom project is the Horizon 2020 funded project: SafeConsumE. The knowledge, as well as all the unanswered questions generated from ScareCom, made it possible for Nofima to coordinate a large EU project around consumer behavior and food safety. The risk communication WP in SafeConsumE will be headed by the coordinator of ScareCom, which will secure a continuation of the risk communication research for the next five years.

Communication with consumers is one of the most important elements in the effective management and control of food-borne hazards. This is particularly important in crisis situations, for example, during a food scare. During the recent horse meat scandal i n Europe, consumers were shocked, food industry shaken and food safety authorities unsure how to react. Unfortunately, only the most general recommendations exist as to what type of crisis communication would be appropriate in such a situation. Many earli er investigations of the evolution of health scares were either limited to individual perceptions of risk or to institutional responses to risk. A lack of cross-disciplinary research has resulted in a failure to provide empirical tests of these two approa ches together, thereby severely limiting their applicability and usefulness. The overall purpose of this project is to provide guidelines for best practice regarding risk communication during a crisis. Safe and healthy food throughout the whole value ch ain is one of Bionærs main aims. Cross-disciplinary research leading to sustainable value chains and value creation for the Norwegian Bio industry is to be stimulated. This project directly responds to these requirements by providing: Cross-disciplinary research. Limitation of previous research will be rectified by linking food safety, consumer perception, risk communication and crisis management expertise, resulting in significant advances in the state of the art, and the provision of an effective comm unication strategy for risk and crisis management. Sustainable value creation. This project will directly inform policy regarding the most effective way to communicate with consumers under crisis conditions. A broad range of information from a variety of sources confuses the consumer. Better crisis management can limit the scope of the crisis.