Short CommunicationIndividual attitudes on food quality and safety: Empirical evidence on EU countries

•We study how individual characteristics explain perceptions of food quality.•We use data from the Eurobarometer 2010 Special Survey on Risk Perception.•We are the first to analyze this large dataset with multivariate regressions.•Women, older and more educated individuals care about calories, safety and taste.•Manual workers, house-persons and unemployed especially care about prices.

The aim of this study is to examine how perceptions of food quality are explained by demographic and socio-economic features at the individual level. We analyze data from the 2010 Eurobarometer Special Survey on Risk Perception. By estimating ordered logit models, we find that women, older and more educated individuals are more interested about calories, safety and taste. Moreover, parents are more conscious about price, hunger satisfaction and safety, while managers care more about conviviality. Manual workers, house-persons and unemployed individuals are especially careful regarding prices. We also perform a Principal Component Analysis to investigate the unobserved drivers of individual responses.