The Relationship Among Food Safety Knowledge, Attitude, and Behavior of Young Turkish Women

Abstract

Objective: The aim of this article is to examine the relationships among food safety knowledge, attitudes, and self-reported behaviors of young women aged between 20 and 25 years and to investigate the mediating role of food safety attitude between knowledge and behavior.

Methods: The cross-sectional study was conducted with a total of 1,219 young women, with a mean age of 21.3 ± 1.25 years. In order to express the effects of food safety knowledge and attitude on behavior, a structural model was proposed. First, a confirmatory measurement model which reveals how well the observed variables represent the underlying constructs was tested. In the second step, the structural model which allows for analyzing multiple regression equations with multiple dependent variables was analyzed. In order to investigate whether the effect of food safety knowledge on behavior can be mediated by attitude, the mediation analysis was performed.

Results: The findings provided support for the hypothesis by clearly indicating that the relationship between food safety knowledge and behavior is mediated by attitude. This implies that encouraging food safety attitude by increasing knowledge rather than simply increasing the level of knowledge might be a more appropriate target for behavior. Although there are direct relationships among knowledge, attitude, and behavior; it is a fact that people's knowledge will not turn into behavior anytime and anywhere.

Conclusions: Governments, food producers, food industrialists, and consumers must all be counted as the people who responsible for providing food safety. With this responsibility, the role of the government is to realize effective, widespread, and systematic food control. Consumers are the last point of contact to food; therefore, consumers’ knowledge and practice of food safety play significant roles in foodborne disease outbreaks. They need to learn about safe food handling procedures to maintain their health now and in the future.

Key teaching points

• Women have important tasks in the purchase, preparation, and storage of food.

• This article develops a mediated structural equation model to link food safety knowledge, attitude, and behavior.

• Food safety attitude has a mediating role between knowledge and behavior.

• In order to improve food safety behavior, it is necessary to improve attitude by increasing the knowledge.

KEYWORDS:

• Food safety
• hygiene
• structural equation modeling
• mediation
• young women

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the postgraduates who have made useful contributions and have exerted their efforts in the collection of the study data and to the women consumers who have answered the questions honestly. The authors would like to thank the consumers for their sincerity.

Authors’ contributions

NS designed the study, worked on the data collection, and wrote the manuscript. FB conducted analysis and wrote the manuscript. NS and FB critically reviewed the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.