Perceived Food Risk: Personal and General. Lennart Sjöberg, Center for Risk Research, Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden
A mailed survey about perceived food risk was conducted.
It covered a broad range of topics, but focused mainly on personal
and general risks. A large random sample (N=2200) of the Swedish
population was invited to participate; the response rate was 63%.
The resulting attitude to food was quite positive on the whole,
and people perceived that domestically produced food was healthy
and low-risk. They were, however, quite worried that Sweden's
EU membership would bring about a lowered food quality and increased
food risk. They also rated food prices to be very high, but agreed
that food was still worth its price. Behavior related food risks,
such as dietary habits, were rated as low personal risks, while
environmentally induced food risks, such as traces of pesticides,
were rated higher. Personal and general food risk ratings gave
quite different information and they were spread over a whole
spectrum of various risks introduced into the design for comparative
purposes. Organically grown food and health food were not regarded
as particularly attractive alternatives. Very few respondents
were vegetarians. Fasting was more popular and was done mostly
to "cleanse the body". Special problem groups, consisting
of overweight individuals (BMI>30) and those unusually worried
about food risks, were investigated. It was found that these
groups consisted largely of different types of respondents, calling
for different risk communication strategies.