Satisfaction with food-related life and beliefs about food health, safety, freshness and taste among the elderly in China: A segmentation analysis

Abstract

This paper focuses on Chinese elderly’s life satisfaction with food, a specific and important domain of Chinese people’s daily life, with two purposes: first, to investigate the relationship between satisfaction with food-related life and life satisfaction among Chinese elderly; second, to segment Chinese elderly based on their beliefs about food health, safety, freshness and taste, and profile them by their life satisfaction, satisfaction with food-relate life, food-related goals, self-rated health status, self-rated economic status and socio-demographic characteristics. Data were collected by personal interviews conducted in Beijing with 452 participants above 60 years old from March to May 2018. The correlation between satisfaction with food-related life and life satisfaction in the present study was positive and higher than in other countries. Three distinct segments were identified: health and safety concerned (38.6%), hedonic and less health concerned (29.4%), and less safety and somewhat health concerned (32.0%). The level of satisfaction with food-related life of the elderly was the lowest among the health and safety concerned segment, neutral in the hedonic and less health concerned segment, and highest among the less safety and somewhat health concerned segment. The elderly’s food safety belief might play a more dominant role than other food attributes beliefs in their satisfaction with food-related life. Eating a healthy diet and eating a safe diet were perceived as the most important food-related goals while keeping food expenditure as low as possible was perceived as not important by participants. Implications for how to improve Chinese elderly’s satisfaction with food-related life and future research were discussed.