Consumers' concerns about food and health in Australia and New Zealand

Three studies were conducted in Australia and New Zealand to examine consum ers' ratings of food and health concerns, the influence of sociodemographic factors on them, and the interrelationship; between perceived concerns. Si milar results were found in both countries. Principal-components analyses y ielded several factors that suggested consumers in both countries perceived food and health issues along several key dimensions. These were related to concerns about food safety, food system issues, health, the environment an d animal and human welfare. Generally, women expressed more concern than di d men about most issues, while young people and highly educated people expr essed least concern. These differences suggest that familiarity, perceived control and personal resources may have some influence on expressed concern s. However, other psychological influences remain to be identified since on ly small amounts of variance in the key dimensions were explained by the de mographic variables. Comparisons of the rankings of the issues in the two N ew Zealand studies, administered 2 rears apart, showed that they were very similar (rho = 0.91, P <0.0001) despite the use of different response settl e wording. This supports the view that the population's evaluation of food issues may be enduring and suggests they are relatively independent of diff erences in elicitation questions.