Media coverage of food safety and expenditures for food away from home: empirical evidence from China’s family panel studies

Purpose This study explores whether media coverage of Chinese food safety guide consumer behaviour and determines its impact. Design/methodology/approach Using data from the China Family Panel Studies, this study implements unsupervised machine learning methods to quantitatively identify themes in news media coverage of food safety across various provinces and regions. Based on these findings, this study examines the impact of coverage of food safety on consumer behaviour related to FAFH. Findings We find that media coverage of food safety in the restaurant sector significantly decreases household expenditure on FAFH relative to total expenditure. While negative coverage substantially decreases expenditure on FAFH, non-negative coverage significantly increases it. Reports of food safety incidents outside consumers’ province are negatively correlated with expenditure on FAFH, whereas reports within province significantly increases such spending. Further, the negative impact of media coverage on FAFH spending is less pronounced among higher-income families, households headed by individuals with high educational levels and those with low sensitivity to newspaper information. A robust government information infrastructure also mitigates this negative impact. Research limitations/implications The findings have important policy reference value for promoting the healthy development of catering and other life services by improving news reporting and the regulatory system. Originality/value This article employs machine learning methods to identify news reports related to food safety in the catering industry quantitatively and incorporates them into the study of household consumption in China. Consequently, this not only fills a gap in the existing literature but also provides a new perspective for interdisciplinary research in economics, sociology and computer science.