Food security concerns moderate safety concerns in the risk perception of imported agricultural and aquatic products

Global concerns about the safety risks associated with imported food consumption are increasing due to rapid changes in political, economic, and environmental conditions. These concerns, which are largely perceptual in nature, reveal a gap in the existing literature on food risk awareness for two key reasons. First, while food safety awareness has been explored, food security awareness has been largely overlooked. Second, the concepts of food safety and food security are often used interchangeably, though they should be clearly distinguished and analyzed in comparison when examining imported goods. This study applies risk perception theory (RPT) by positioning food safety importance as the baseline predictor of perceived safety risk while introducing food security importance as a moderator that influences the manifestation of this perception. Using survey data from 505 respondents in South Korea, we tested this conceptual model. The findings reveal that the effect of food safety importance on perceived risk becomes weaker when food security importance is high. This suggests that under conditions of heightened concern for food availability and affordability, safety-related apprehensions tend to diminish. These insights have important implications for the design of policies that aim to balance food safety and food security within institutional and governance frameworks.