The influence of chronic and temporary accessibility on trust and policy support

Abstract

Food is very closely related to our everyday life and consumers are intolerable to food risk. The impact of media report on food risk perception has been addressed but more elaborated approach on consumers’ cognitive process of food risk perception via media is needed. Theoretically guided by accessibility theory, we examined the relationship between consumers’ perception of food risk (i.e. food schema), media use, media frame, trust, and policy support. Furthermore, anger was employed as a mediating variable influencing on trust and policy support. Results found that the level of media use had a significant positive effect on trust and policy support. Among the media frames, the government responsibility frame and corporate responsibility frame were shown to be negative predictors for trust and policy support. As for the food schema, checking schema was the most influential negative factor on trust and policy support. Anger was found to exert a negative effect on trust and policy support but this effect decreased if the level of trust was high. In terms of the relationship between media frames and the food schema on anger, most food schema reduced the strong positive effects of the media frame on anger. This means peoples’ anger induced by media frames can be diminished by individuals’ specific food schema. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.