A study on the classification of consumer types based on food safety attitudes: focusing on the Fukushima nuclear accident

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to classify consumer types and to analyze purchase behavior depending on food safety attitudes related to the Fukushima nuclear accident. Based on the consumer survey data, factor analysis and cluster analysis were done to classify consumer types. Applying factor analysis, six factors with a total variance of 73.4% were extracted from 22 basic variables. The 6 factors were termed ‘anxiety from ingesting agricultural and fishery products after the nuclear accident’, ‘importance of food safety when purchasing food’, ‘reduced rate of purchases of agricultural and fishery products after the accident’, ‘importance of food prices’, ‘socio-demographic characteristics’ and ‘family composition’. Using cluster analysis, consumers were classified into 5 types using the factor scores of 6 factors. The main results are as follows. For every consumer type, the anxiety about imported agricultural and fishery products was higher than that for domestic products after the nuclear accident. The food safety attitudes of consumers were mainly formed by the socio-demographic characteristics. Consumer types with high-education and high-income responded flexibly to the food safety concerning the accident; especially, the consumer type with a high-income and kids under 19 responded very reasonably to the accident. However, consumer types with a low-income and aged over 50 or less than 30 years were the least responsive to the accident, mainly due to financial restrictions. Thus, we suggest some food safety strategies and policy implications based on consumer type for food safety after the accident.