To fear the unknown: Covid-19 confinement, fear, and food choice

Abstract

The coronavirus outbreak in December 2019 completely changed the dynamic of consumption in different sectors of industry. The food and beverage industries have been profoundly affected, from production, to modifications in consumers' choices. Among the different reasons behind those modifications is confinement, which forces consumers to stay at home for an extended period and just go out to perform essential tasks, such as going to the supermarket. We hypothesized that this new dynamic of consumption could create a situation of fear that changes food choice. To test this hypothesis, two studies were conducted in three countries with a different degree of confinement: Mexico (flexible), Spain (strict), and Peru (hard). Study one consisted of a free association task with 60 participants in each country with the inductor word "coronavirus and food". The different associations served as the basis to build a structured questionnaire, which was used in the second study focused on fear and food choice. The second study was applied to 450 participants in the same three countries. Results showed that fear can be separated into nine dimensions: social, emotional, food supply, government, basic needs, food-delivery, overeating, immunity, and family conflicts. The participants could also be clustered into four different groups that differ in their country of origin and sex, but also in their food choice. Overall, the results showed that fear influenced consumer's food choices during a confinement period.

Keywords: Coronavirus; Cross-cultural; Pandemic; Quarantine.

Graphical abstract

Fig. 1

Percent per country of the six categories. (+) * Indicate significant differences across countries: Health & Hygiene (higher in Perú and Mexico), Buying activities (Higher in Spain), and Others (Higher in Spain).

Fig. 2

Varimax PCA: The nine PC with an eigenvalue greater than 1. To facilitate the interpretation, only statements with a contribution higher than the average statement and a squared cosine of at least 0.5 are labeled. The variables are colored differently according to their correlation to Axe 1 or 2, 3 or 4, etc.

Fig. 3

Summary of the nine dimensions of fear to COVID-19, related to food and drinks.

Fig. 4

Dendrogram showing the central objects that characterize each cluster, and their dimension. Cluster 3 (Dimension 4 – Government), Cluster 1 (Dimension 1 – Social), Cluster 4 (Dimension 5 – Basic needs), and Cluster 2 (Dimension 3 - Food Supply, and Dimension 8 – Immunity).

Fig. 5

Correspondence analysis of foods consumed during the last two weeks by participants in the four consumer clusters. Only variables with >1% of frequency of elicitation were considered for the CA.