Citizen Characteristics and Their Participation in Food Safety Social Co-governance: Public Health Implications

Objective:Given that positive psychological capital motivates citizens to actively participate in social affairs, this study aims to provide insight into food safety risk management in China by empirically determining which individual characteristics are associated with positive psychological capital for actively participating in social co-governance.Methods:A questionnaire-based survey was undertaken between December 5 and 10, 2020. The study participants were residents of Wuxi in China over the age of 18 years. A validated and pretested questionnaires was used to elicit responses with the participants. Student'st-test and one-way analysis of variance were performed to determine which individual characteristics are significantly correlated with the psychological capital of citizens who participate in co-governance.Post-hocmultiple comparisons were performed for each individual characteristic with a significant correlation to determine which categories of these characteristics yielded the significant differences. Study data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics 24.0.Results:A total of 752 completed responses were received. Most respondents were females (52.39%), aged 26–45 (66.09