Burgers or Tofu? Eating Between Two Worlds: Risk Information Seeking and Processing During Dietary Acculturation

• Published in: Health communication Vol. 30; no. 8; pp. 758 - 771
• Main Author: Lu, Hang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Routledge 03.08.2015; Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
• Subjects: Acculturation; Adaptation, Psychological; Adult; China - ethnology; Diet; Diet - psychology; Eating; Female; Humans; Information Seeking Behavior; International Educational Exchange; Likelihood Functions; Male; Meat; Motivation; Nutrition education; Risk; Risk factors; Self Efficacy; Soy Foods; Students - psychology; Students - statistics & numerical data; United States; Young Adult
• DOI: 10.1080/10410236.2014.899658
• ISSN: 1041-0236; 1532-7027

This study attempted to examine what factors might motivate Chinese international students, the fastest growing ethnic student group in the United States, to seek and process information about potential health risks from eating American-style food. This goal was accomplished by applying the Risk Information Seeking and Processing (RISP) model to this study. An online 2 (severity: high vs. low) × 2 (coping strategies: present vs. absent) between-subjects experiment was conducted via Qualtrics to evaluate the effects of the manipulated variables on the dependent variables of interest as well as various relationships proposed in the RISP model. A convenience sample of 635 participants was recruited online. Data were analyzed primarily using structural equation modeling (SEM) in AMOS 21.0 with maximum likelihood estimation. The final conceptual model has a good model fit to the data given the sample size. The results showed that although the experimentally manipulated variables failed to cause any significant differences in individuals' perceived severity and self-efficacy, this study largely supported the RISP model's propositions about the sociopsychological factors that explain individual variations in information seeking and processing. More specifically, the findings indicated a prominent role of informational subjective norms and affective responses (both negative and positive emotions) in predicting individuals' information seeking and processing. Future implications and limitations are also discussed.