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Food Consumption Behavior of Pakistani Students Living in China: The Role of Food Safety and Health Consciousness in the Wake of Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic
The emergence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has considerably changedglobal food production, processing, and consumption at different levels. Sojournersare among those who have experienced a higher level of food insecurity duringthe crisis of the COVID-19 outbreak. The current research aimed to investigate theimmediate consumption behavioral intentions of the Pakistani international students inthe People’s Republic of China (PRC) during the wake of COVID-19 pandemic. Thisstudy applied the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and background factors of foodsafety and health consciousness that influence the consumption behavioral intentionof Pakistani students toward unfamiliar local food in China. A relational model wasanalyzed where food safety and health consciousness were hypothesized to serve asbackground variables associated with TPB components. Moreover, the indirect effectsof food safety and health consciousness on behavioral intentions were assessed. Thedata were collected through convenience samples from 462 Pakistani internationalstudents and were analyzed through partial least square structural equation modeling(PLS-SEM). The results confirmed that food safety and health consciousness werepositively associated with attitude (ATT), subjective norm (SN), and perceived behavioralcontrol (PBC). However, food safety and health consciousness were indirectly associatedwith the behavioral intention only through ATT and SN. The results highlighted therole of food safety and health consciousness as important antecedents of classicalTPB components that affect intentions and behaviors to avoid unfamiliar local foodin a migrated context. The present study provides enlightenment to those who aimto investigate the consumption behavioral intentions of sojourners in the wake of thepandemic situation based on food safety and health consciousness. The findings of thecurrent study are also applicable to general consumption patterns in the food sector.