Segments of cognitive responses towards local food safety concerns amongst international students in Ghana

Abstract

Despite the attention paid to food safety research, few empirical works have used a non-reductionist perspective to understand how international consumers cognitively respond to local food safety conditions. Using the tri-component theorisation and the two-step clustering approach with the Kruskal Wallis test on a sample of 109 international students in Ghana, this study provides a non-reductionist cognitive segment of international students towards local food safety conditions in Ghana. The findings revealed that there are three cognitive segments of international consumers towards local food safety conditions, namely self-regards, pessimists, and epicureans. Self-assureds respond to their own self-cognition towards local food safety concerns but deny the cognition of others, moderately respond affectively and sometimes avoid local foods. Pessimists have a highly sensitive cognitive response towards local food safety conditions, high affective responses and avoid the consumption of local foods as a result, while epicureans do not cognitively respond to local food safety conditions, have low affective reactions and consume local foods regardless of the food safety conditions. The implications of these findings in the context of local food preparation, packaging, and handling as well as food safety regulations and marketing are discussed