Unfolding Media Source Characteristics Regarding Food Fraud: A Comparative Study of the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) in China (Preprint)

BACKGROUND The ongoing rumors and scandals regarding food fraud, adulteration, and contamination are highly visible. Health risk information circulating through media and interpersonal communication channels has made health crises an important research agenda. OBJECTIVE This study explores the issue of food fraud and the effect of rumors, scandals, and misinformation. Further, it studies whether and how these issues have impacted governmental efforts to mitigate food fraud. METHODS The Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) was adopted for use in China, after which a cross-sectional study with face-to-face interviews was performed. Participants from Beijing and Hefei were selected using multistage sampling of adults during May 2017. Based on four government surveillance reports on food rumors and safety scandals, a descriptive, correlation, and multivariate variance analysis was applied to the data. RESULTS A total of 3,090 results were gathered and analyzed. An average of 83.6% (n = 2,584) respondents heard at least one food rumor. Learning about food fraud is correlated with interpersonal connections (e.g., doctors or health specialists) for accessing food health information. Overall, Chinese citizens with a higher level of interpersonal connection were more likely to be concerned about food scandals with the statistical difference (p < .001). The Interpersonal connection was the highest frequency of communication sources (n = 698, 55.7%), followed by traditional media (n = 325, 25.9%) and Internet portal (n = 144, 11.5%). The respondents in Beijing were confronted more frequently by food rumors (range 346-1253) than those in Hefei (range 155-946). The urban dwellers in Beijing and their rural counterparts in Hefei also differ in terms of perceiving different levels of food risk from different media sources. The food scandal narratives examined the conspiracy belie finds that social media play a more important role in influencing attitude against scandals for users in Hefei, rather than in Beijing. CONCLUSIONS A media complementarity and food fraud information acquisition examined food fraud incidents with intent to harm, mainly done for economic gain. The HINTS China reports that around 73.6% of Chinese respondents prefer to go to their physicians for quarrying food health information first; however, when asked where they actually went, up to 36.6% of Beijing respondents and 55.6% of Hefei respondents reported going online first. Food fraud regarding food originating from Japan, Vietnam, and New Zealand implies that the information concerning food fraud in these countries negatively affects the valuation of importing country. This study extends beyond local food products to foreign countries that import conspiracy beliefs with the fake food. Nonetheless, in China, consumers have to be on guard not just against fake food, but also spreading fake information and news about food.