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The public perception of food and non-food related risks of infection and trust in the risk communication during COVID-19 crisis: A study on selected countries from the Arab region
The coronavirus pandemic caused a state of panic worldwide. Mixed messages were given about its risk and how to contain it, when trust in authorities and reliable scientific information are essential to reduce unnecessary scares and inappropriate risk perceptions. We know little about public concern...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Published by Elsevier Ltd.
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7833585/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33519101 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodcont.2020.107617 |
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author | Faour-Klingbeil, Dima Osaili, Tareq M. Al-Nabulsi, Anas A. Jemni, Monia Todd, Ewen C.D. |
author_facet | Faour-Klingbeil, Dima Osaili, Tareq M. Al-Nabulsi, Anas A. Jemni, Monia Todd, Ewen C.D. |
author_sort | Faour-Klingbeil, Dima |
collection | PubMed |
description | The coronavirus pandemic caused a state of panic worldwide. Mixed messages were given about its risk and how to contain it, when trust in authorities and reliable scientific information are essential to reduce unnecessary scares and inappropriate risk perceptions. We know little about public concerns and opinions in health authorities in the Arab world. Thus, an attempt was made to generate such information through a web-based survey. A total of 1074 subjects from Lebanon, Jordan, and Tunisia were recruited to explore their perception of food and non-food risks of infection and the influence of the source of information, trust, and attitudes towards the local authorities' communication of risk. Seventy percent of the respondents were concerned that COVID-19 may be transmitted through food. The perception of risk from touching contaminated surfaces and food packaging and being exposed to infected people during food shopping was even higher. For only less than half of the respondents, the information from local authorities was considered trustworthy and the associated risk communication and response to false rumors were timely, effective, and clear. But the satisfaction level among the Jordanians was remarkably stronger than for the Lebanese and Tunisian respondents. The demographic factors, trust in information, and attitudes towards authorities' performance in risk communication did not influence risk perceptions. Respondents’ knowledge was limited based on their chief sources of information, such as social media, local news media broadcasts, and announcements by the World Health Organization. Our conclusion is that unnecessary fear increases among the public when risks that impact heath are unknown. More research in the Arab region is needed to understand the determinants of risk perceptions considering psychological factors on the risk to health. Unfortunately, it is difficult to restrict or contain misleading information from various forms of social media. We recommend that for reducing fear and building confidence with the public for appropriate action during the pandemic, local authorities should enhance the quality and level of details of the information that they share during such crises. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7833585 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Published by Elsevier Ltd. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-78335852021-01-26 The public perception of food and non-food related risks of infection and trust in the risk communication during COVID-19 crisis: A study on selected countries from the Arab region Faour-Klingbeil, Dima Osaili, Tareq M. Al-Nabulsi, Anas A. Jemni, Monia Todd, Ewen C.D. Food Control Article The coronavirus pandemic caused a state of panic worldwide. Mixed messages were given about its risk and how to contain it, when trust in authorities and reliable scientific information are essential to reduce unnecessary scares and inappropriate risk perceptions. We know little about public concerns and opinions in health authorities in the Arab world. Thus, an attempt was made to generate such information through a web-based survey. A total of 1074 subjects from Lebanon, Jordan, and Tunisia were recruited to explore their perception of food and non-food risks of infection and the influence of the source of information, trust, and attitudes towards the local authorities' communication of risk. Seventy percent of the respondents were concerned that COVID-19 may be transmitted through food. The perception of risk from touching contaminated surfaces and food packaging and being exposed to infected people during food shopping was even higher. For only less than half of the respondents, the information from local authorities was considered trustworthy and the associated risk communication and response to false rumors were timely, effective, and clear. But the satisfaction level among the Jordanians was remarkably stronger than for the Lebanese and Tunisian respondents. The demographic factors, trust in information, and attitudes towards authorities' performance in risk communication did not influence risk perceptions. Respondents’ knowledge was limited based on their chief sources of information, such as social media, local news media broadcasts, and announcements by the World Health Organization. Our conclusion is that unnecessary fear increases among the public when risks that impact heath are unknown. More research in the Arab region is needed to understand the determinants of risk perceptions considering psychological factors on the risk to health. Unfortunately, it is difficult to restrict or contain misleading information from various forms of social media. We recommend that for reducing fear and building confidence with the public for appropriate action during the pandemic, local authorities should enhance the quality and level of details of the information that they share during such crises. Published by Elsevier Ltd. 2021-03 2020-09-10 /pmc/articles/PMC7833585/ /pubmed/33519101 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodcont.2020.107617 Text en © 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. |
spellingShingle | Article Faour-Klingbeil, Dima Osaili, Tareq M. Al-Nabulsi, Anas A. Jemni, Monia Todd, Ewen C.D. The public perception of food and non-food related risks of infection and trust in the risk communication during COVID-19 crisis: A study on selected countries from the Arab region |
title | The public perception of food and non-food related risks of infection and trust in the risk communication during COVID-19 crisis: A study on selected countries from the Arab region |
title_full | The public perception of food and non-food related risks of infection and trust in the risk communication during COVID-19 crisis: A study on selected countries from the Arab region |
title_fullStr | The public perception of food and non-food related risks of infection and trust in the risk communication during COVID-19 crisis: A study on selected countries from the Arab region |
title_full_unstemmed | The public perception of food and non-food related risks of infection and trust in the risk communication during COVID-19 crisis: A study on selected countries from the Arab region |
title_short | The public perception of food and non-food related risks of infection and trust in the risk communication during COVID-19 crisis: A study on selected countries from the Arab region |
title_sort | public perception of food and non-food related risks of infection and trust in the risk communication during covid-19 crisis: a study on selected countries from the arab region |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7833585/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33519101 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodcont.2020.107617 |
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