New food product consumer's behaviour: health literacy and neofobia

• Autor(a) principal: Luís, Luís Soares
• Data de Publicação: 2016
• Outros Autores: Luís, Henrique
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/34280
• topic: Consumer Education; Consumer Behavior; New Food Products; Health Literacy; Neophobia; Neophilia

Background The development of a new food product aims to respond to consumer´s concerns related to food and health promotion. Education plays a fundamental role in consumer’s behavior by providing tools that allows them to make informed decisions. Consumer’s empowerment is essential to the success of a health promotion strategy, also the knowledge of health literacy level is important to define a proper health policy. The aim of this study is to evaluate health literacy level and new foods consumption behavior (especially neophobic and neophilic behavior) of the Lisbon area residents in Portugal. Methods A questionnaire, that includes the Portuguese version of the Newest Vital Sign, was applied to a stratified sample of 384 individuals (over 15 years old) living in the Lisbon area in Portugal distributed accordingly to 2001 Census. Health literacy was evaluated by the Portuguese version of NVS, a tool by which a number of health-related information, in this case nutritional information written in a food label, is used to demonstrate one’s ability to use it to answer to questions. Data analysis was performed in SPSS®, version 19. Results Study results show that there is a close relationship between health literacy and general literacy. It is also clear that health literacy level is low for the majority of the participants and that this factor is relevant in new foods consumption, by positively affecting neophilia. Older individuals, with lower school years attendance and health literacy, are the main consumers with neophobic behavior. Higher health literacy is also directly associated with consumers concerns on how the product was manufactured and on environmental characteristics. There is no statistical association between gender and health literacy, but it is of relevance the fact that an association between health literacy and food neophilia is statistically significant. Conclusion Considering that new food products may improve health and diet aspects of a population, our findings allow us to conclude that educational strategies are needed to improve health literacy and consequently food neophilia, especially in the older population with lower school years attendance. Significant determinants of the acceptance of novel food products include: educational level, health literacy level and age.