Relationships Among Individual, Institutional, and System Level Public Trust: a Case For Consumer Evaluations of Food Safety

Individual, Institutional, and System Level Public Trust: A Case for Consumer Evaluations of Food Safety

Ahmet Ekici

Bilkent University

Despite the central importance of public trust to consumer behavior and public policy research, relatively little is known about the origins and relationships between various types/levels of public trust. For example, it is not clear why consumers trust their own grocery stores and yet distrust grocery stores in general in providing safe food. Further, it is not clear why as consumers distrust food retailers, regulatory agencies, law-makers, food manufacturers, scientists, they still trust the food system to supply them safe food. The purpose of this article is to understand the origins and the relationships between institutional and system level public trust in the context of food safety and consumer evaluations of genetically modified foods

Citation:

Ahmet Ekici (2006) ,"Relationships Among Individual, Institutional, and System Level Public Trust: a Case For Consumer Evaluations of Food Safety", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 33, eds. Connie Pechmann and Linda Price, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 280-282.