Food safety and consumption patterns in the Campania region during the COVID-19 emergency.

Abstract

The objective of this study was to evaluate the association between consumers' experience of COVID-19 and changes in their food purchasing decisions during the lockdown as a result of their risk perception. An online questionnaire was created to analyze consumer purchasing behavior and awareness during the pandemic. At the end of the online administration period, the replies collected were downloaded. A descriptive analysis of the data was carried out through the construction of tables of individual variables; for each variable, the patterns, frequencies, and percentages with which they occurred were determined. Subsequently, a multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) was conducted; this is one of the most widely used statistical techniques for the "multiple" analysis of qualitative or mixed data collected through questionnaires. The final extraction of the completed questionnaires returned the replies of 114 individuals. In the MCA, not all the variables of the matrix were considered, as they were not proportional to the number of individuals. We considered 7 active variables and 1 supplementary variable, which contributed to the formation of factors. The most notable pattern was that those people who were most worried about the risk of contagion not only sanitized their purchases but also reduced their online purchases and deliveries, believing that these measures could reduce the risk of contagion.