Food Protection Trends - March/April 2021 - 211

TABLE 2. Self-reported safe food-handling practices among a sample of 209 Reddit
users, 2019-2020 (cont.)
Characteristic

n (%)

Usual number of days that leftovers containing meat or poultry are kept before consumption (n = 201)a,d
1 day or less
2 days
3 days
4 days
5 days or longer

29 (16.5)
48 (27.3)
49 (27.8)
25 (14.2)
25 (14.2)

These questions were tabulated only for respondents that indicated that they prepare meals at home containing meat or poultry (n = 181).
Multiple selections were possible for this question (i.e., percentages do not add to 100%).
c
This question was only tabulated for respondents that indicated they own a food thermometer (n = 107).
d
This question was only tabulated for respondents that indicated they keep or store leftovers containing meat or poultry (n = 176).
a

behavior and adoption of health-related advice among users
of this website (31). This finding suggests that those who
have already looked to Reddit for advice about safe food
handling are likely to do so again. Furthermore, there were
no differences in self-reported safe food handling practices
among those who previously searched for food safety
information on Reddit and those who did not, indicating
that behaviors are largely consistent between these groups of
respondents. This finding suggests that some positive food
safety messages are likely being widely disseminated among
the Reddit community, such as not washing poultry before
cooking, but efforts are still needed to improve other areas,
particularity food thermometer ownership and use.
Respondents who perceived Reddit to be a useful and
credible source of information were more likely to intend
to search for food safety information on this platform
in the following 2 weeks. This result corresponds with a
prior study that found these TAM constructs predicted
consumers' intention to use health-related information on
the Internet (39) and with a study that found consumers
strongly value the accuracy and trustworthiness of online
information sources about foodborne illness (22). Each
Reddit community has a team of volunteer moderators who
help to remove spam and poor-quality answers, and answers
will move toward the bottom of the list of responses, or even
be hidden, if they receive enough downvotes from other
users. In addition to trust in their peers (29, 38), it is possible
that the survey respondents viewed these mechanisms
as important quality-control strategies, enhancing their
perceived credibility of the information provided. This is
supported by some evidence, because a prior study of Reddit
and other community-based question-and-answer websites
found that top-rated answers to food safety questions were

more likely to be correct than other answers (35). However,
much of the food safety advice provided on these websites
contains inaccuracies (35), indicating that additional efforts
are needed to enhance reliable food safety messaging in
online communities.
Respondents who viewed safe food handling at home as a
pleasant activity were less likely to intend to search for food
safety information on Reddit in the following 2 weeks, which
suggests that those who enjoy safe food handling may not
require additional information to inform their behaviors.
Previous research has shown that emotions may be an
important factor influencing consumers' safe food-handling
decisions (27) and could be integrated into future outreach
and education strategies. None of the other TPB constructs
were related to respondents' food safety searching intentions
on Reddit, indicating that these intentions are driven more
by consumers' perceptions of and prior use of the website
than their safe food-handling perceptions and beliefs.
There are several limitations to this study. The survey was
distributed to targeted Reddit and Facebook communities
designed for exchange of surveys and focused on cooking and
food handling at home. Therefore, the respondents may not
be representative of the broader population of young adults or
Reddit users. Additional research is warranted to investigate
the food safety intentions and behaviors of young adults who
use other popular community-based websites and social media
platforms. Only two-thirds of those who started filling out the
survey completed it and were included in the analysis. Future
studies in this area should consider the use of an incentive to increase response and completion rates. Despite these limitations,
our final sample size was comparable to that of prior studies in
this area (23, 25, 26, 39) and was likely sufficient to estimate the
predictive model under investigation in this study (13).

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