Predicting Food Hygiene. An Investigation of Social Factors and Past Behaviour in an Extended Model of the Health Action Process Approach

Purpose: The current study uses an extended version of the Health Action Process Approach (HAPA) to predict food safety behaviour.

Design/methodology/approach: Two hundred and fifty-nine participants completed a questionnaire assessing variables of HAPA as well as additional predictors including: risk awareness, outcome expectancy, action self-efficacy, subjective norm, social support, past behaviour, and intention. One week later, participants returned a follow up questionnaire measuring their planning, maintenance self-efficacy, recovery self-efficacy, social support and behaviour. Regressions were utilised to predict variances in intention, planning and behaviour.

Findings: The original HAPA model predicted 30.8% of the variance in intention and 17% of the variance in behaviour, confirming the suitability of the HAPA to predict food safety behaviour. The HAPA constructs also predicted 17.2% of variance in planning. The extended version of the model significantly increased the proportion of variance explained to 54.3% and 38.8% of variance in intention and behaviour respectively.

Research Limitations/implications: The HAPA was able to predict intention and behaviour comparably to other studies. The additional variables revealed intention to adopt food safety behaviours is partially dependent on parents of individuals, and behaviour is habitual in nature, explaining the low predictive power of planning.

Practical Implications: The current study sheds light on the behaviour and suggests possible ways to design interventions. Interventions should focus on the habitual nature of the behaviour, thus implementing new correct habits.

Originality/value: This study aimed to bolster the lack of studies using the HAPA to model food safety behaviour. This study also aimed to include additional variables into HAPA to increase the amount of predicted variance in intention and behaviour.