Should I stay, or should I go? Consumers' perceived risk and intention to visit restaurants during the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil

Abstract

This study aimed to verify how consumers' intention to visit restaurants during the pandemic is affected by consumers' risk perception and different types of trust. The sample was composed of 546 consumers from 89 different cities in Brazil. An adapted 43 items questionnaire with 5-point scales was administered, and analyzed usingstructural equation modeling. The results indicate that consumers' trust in a restaurant and brand, fair price, solidarity with the restaurant sector, disease denial, and health surveillance trust predict intention to visit a restaurant during the COVID-19 pandemic. Age has significant moderated effects, reducing disease denial effects. The trust in restaurants and brands was the factor with the largest effect size. In a multigroup analysis, it was found that solidarity with the sector does not affect the intention to visit restaurants for consumers without formal work. It is discussed the implications of an increased consumers' risk perception, directly affecting their intentions. Special attention to consumers' trust and fair price perception is fundamental, given consumers' solidary inclination toward helping the restaurant sector. These aspects must be recognized by restaurant owners and managers to be improved and be used to attract consumers.

Keywords: SARS-CoV-2; consumer behavior; disease distrust; foodservice; risk perception; trust.

Graphical abstract

Fig. 1

Proposed model. The positive and negative sign indicates the hypothesis direction

Fig. 2

Final inner path model. The numbers represent the path coefficient values (β), and the numbers within parentheses represent the p-values of the t-Statistics (based on bootstraps with 5000 samples).