| Summary: | 碩士 === 中州科技大學 === 保健食品系 === 104 === ABSTRACT
In recent years, issues and events related to food safety and health, including the presence of dioxin in duck eggs, grouper fish poisoned with malachite, the adulteration of milk with melamine, mad cow disease, the labeling of trans-fatty acids, and the addition of harmful substances to food products (e.g., formaldehyde or sulfur dioxide added to dried mushrooms) have severely damaged the collective reputation of the food organization. As a result, feelings of uncertainty and subsequent consumer distrust have become pervasive. With the Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) as its theoretical basis, this study treats personnel in the food organization as subjects and focuses on two types of crises that are of utmost concern to consumers—food poisoning (e.g., melamine-tainted milk) and mislabelled products (e.g., the content identified in plasticizer)—for scenario analysis.
In this study, we employ a 2x3 experimental design that manipulates two types of crises (mislabeled food products and food poisoning) and three response policies (no response, admission, and refutation) to investigate how these variables influence consumer attitudes (i.e., attribution of responsibility and willingness to purchase). This experimental design also allows for the evaluation of moderating effects of the organization’s reputation and the performance of a perceived risk analysis. On the basis of these methods, this study reveals that crises in the food organization negatively affect consumer attitudes and that admission is the most effective response policy for mitigating damage to the organization’s reputation, though its effect is significant only for restoring consumer attitudes in the event of food label discrepancies. Additionally, results suggest that there exists a positive relationship between consumers’ perceived risk and a company’s necessity to employ the admission response policy. Finally, results indicate that a trusted organization reputation facilitates the management of crises.
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