Food Safety and Rural Parents in China: Investigating an Effective Path for Risk Communication

Measurements of the effects of improvements in single communication elements (audience, channel, message, etc.) to promote risk and health communication effectiveness have been widely studied; however, whether a combination of optimum communication elements always leads to successful communication has rarely been discussed. In this study, we investigated communication with 909 rural parents in China to explore how these carefully selected communication elements worked together to contribute to the effectiveness of food-related risk communication. Specifically, two sets of communication strategies were designed with different combinations of optimum communication elements and were applied to parents segmented by perception biases. The outcomes show that the effectiveness of communication did not necessarily depend on the combination of optimum elements, but rather on the key element that the audience cared most about. The finding of this research also underscores the need for increased awareness and the importance of both the investigation of the socio-demographic and dimensional perception characteristics of the segmented cluster, and the outcome evaluation procedure in the identification of the key element. Our study develops quantitative exploration of risk communication effectiveness and provides new insight regarding risk/health communication in rural China. An effective path and methodology for risk communication in the rural area of China has been proposed, which would not only provide a practical reference for Chinese practitioners to launch real risk communication campaigns in rural areas, but also methodologically contribute to successful efforts to identify the key element and improve effective communication practices for a larger range of health-related issues.