EXPOSURE TO HEALTH INFORMATION ON WORLD-FOOD-SAFETY-DAY AND ADOPTION OF SAFE FOOD CONSUMPTION BEHAVIOURS AMONG NIGERIAN UNDERGRADUATES

Abstract

Careless food consumption behaviour has been identified among the causes of foodborne diseases. This rise in foodborne disease instigated global action of commemoration of the world food safety day to enhance food safety awareness. The need to understanding what the public do with the messages of world food safety day through an empirical approach instigated this study. Specifically, the study examined the respondents’ level of exposure to the day’s campaign messages, ascertain the dominant source of exposure to the campaign messages, find out whether the respondents’ exposure to these campaign messages translate into a positive attitude toward food consumption and finally, to find out the factor that mainly influenced adoption of the world-food-safety day messages. The study used the survey research approach as its method and reasoned action theory as its theoretical framework. The purposive sampling technique was adopted in selecting 389 undergraduate students of COOU sampled from a population of 14,000 students using the taro Yamni’s sample size determination formula. Finding from the study revealed that although the respondents are poorly exposed to the world-food-safety day messages, their level of adoption of food safety day measures is high. It was also found that social media was the major source of exposure to World Food Safety Day messages, while fear of getting sick dominated the reason for adoption of safe food culture among respondents. It was concluded that further efforts in making more information available to the public will increase the respondents’ exposure to World Food Safety Day messages, as well as increase the adoption of safety measures among the people. It was recommended that more effort should be intensified by the media and government agencies to enhance effective two-way communication using mix media approach to increase awareness and adoption of World Food Safety Day messages.