Explaining Consumer Safe Food Handling Through Behavior-Change Theories: A Systematic Review

Area of Science:

• Food safety research
• Behavioral science
• Public health interventions

Background:

• Consumer food handling behaviors at home often pose safety risks.
• Behavior-change theories are utilized to understand and predict these behaviors.
• A systematic review is needed to identify theories consistently linked to safe food handling.

Purpose of the Study:

• To systematically review and identify behavior-change theories most consistently associated with consumers' safe food handling behaviors.
• To analyze the application and effectiveness of different theories in explaining safe food handling across existing literature.
• To provide insights for developing future interventions based on established behavioral theories.

Main Methods:

• A systematic review methodology was employed, including comprehensive searches, relevance screening, risk-of-bias assessment, data extraction, and descriptive analysis.
• Twenty relevant studies were identified, primarily from Australia and the United States, predominantly using cross-sectional designs and targeting young adults.
• The Theory of Planned Behavior was the most frequently applied theory (45% of studies).

Main Results:

• Most studies (70%) had a high risk of bias, often due to insufficient control for confounding variables.
• The Theory of Planned Behavior and other behavior-change theories were frequently associated with consumer intentions and behaviors related to safe food handling.
• Significant variation was observed in specific theoretical constructs and explained variance across studies.

Conclusions:

• Multiple behavior-change theories can effectively explain consumer safe food handling behaviors.
• These theories offer a foundation for developing targeted behavior-change interventions.
• Theory selection and adaptation to specific populations and contexts are crucial for intervention success.