Perceptions of Food Safety by Urban Consumers in Nanjing, China

The past decade has seen what could reasonably be called an explosion in the number of food-related crises in China. Food safety issues represent a national crisis threatening the physical and psychological health of Chinese citizens, despite the repeated adoption of stringent food safety laws and regulations. This project, based on a stratified random sample of 337 households in Nanjing, assesses perceptions related to different food safety concerns and issues among urban residents and explores differences in perceptions across social strata as defined by socioeconomic and demographic variables using principal component analysis and standard statistical tests.