Communicating About Foodborne Illness: Message Sponsorship and Attempts to Stimulate Perceptions of Risk.* J. C. Gordon, Kansas State University
Since risk perception —the level of concern caused hazards— is a well-established factor impacting a host of human behaviors, communicators are often motivated to stimulate or allay consumers’ emotional reactions hazards. Risk perceptions associated with food products, for example, have sponsored large-scale changes in consumer preferences, have spurred public demands for regulation, and are a significant variable affecting the likelihood that one engages in preventive health behaviors. Since messages impact consumers’ perceptions of risk, messages must be carefully crafted in an environment filled with multiple, sometimes competing, communicative objectives. This study questioned if governmental versus private sponsorship of food-safety messages was related to the amount of risk-inducing and risk-reducing statements in those messages. Results of a quantitative content analysis found a marked difference is message content. Governmental communicators were much more likely to include risk-inducing statements and much less likely to include risk-reducing statements. In direct contrast, private communicators were much less likely to include risk-inducing statements and more likely to include risk-reducing statements. Both in volume and proportion, results show that governmentally sponsored messages more aggressively attempted to stimulate risk perceptions associated with foodborne illness while private communicator discussed foodborne illness is ways that were less likely to stimulate perceptions of risks.
*Best paper semifinalist.
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