Food-Safety Practices in the Domestic Kitchen: Demographic, Personality, and Experiential Determinants

The impact of consumer behavior in determining the safety of foods prepared at home has focused so far on the role of isolated consumer practices. In addition, demographic factors have been applied primarily to explain differences between individuals. In this paper, the use of psychological factors to predict scores on the integrated food-safety score is advocated. In order to assess the relevance of psychological constructs to food-safety behaviors, several relations are tested at the same time in a structural equation model in which it is demonstrated that the inclusion of psychological determinants leads to a better model for the prediction of food-related behaviors in comparison to demographic factors alone.