3.4. The consumers' dependence on information channel getting
food safety knowledge
The rank of the consumers' dependence on information channel
getting food safety knowledge from the most dependent to the
least was as TV or broadcasting, friends or family, internet and
newspaper (Table 10).
Tables 11 and 12 showed some significant differences of the
dependence on information channel with different gender
(p < 0.025, two-tailed), age, income and education (p < 0.05). No
significant difference of the dependence on information channel
with purchase frequency was found. It reported that women relied
more on friends or family to get information than men. Young
people were likely to get information from internet, and older
consumers relied more on other traditional sources such as newspapers,
TV or broadcasting and friends or family to get food
knowledge. The dependence on internet and newspapers significantly
increased with the increase of education. Table 12 showed
that the respondents in relatively higher monthly income group
“10001e20,000 RMB” expressed a significant dependence on all
sources of information compared with other income groups.