Practicing safe eating during the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong: a trust in action perspective

Abstract

From late January 2020 to April 2021, Hong Kong has experienced four waves of COVID-19 infections. It was widely reported that many infection clusters were directly or indirectly linked to eating together in close proximity. Given the fact that COVID-19 infection was transmitted through respiratory droplets, it became an urgent task for the Hong Kong government and the public to act to ensure that they are safe in the physical and social environment when conducting a variety of activities including social interaction and food consumption. As Hong Kong has a reputation of being a food paradise and a majority of the Hong Kong people consume food outside their home, the public became concern about the risk of getting infected with COVID-19 as they patronized their favorite food hideouts.

As such, the Hong Kong government has devised strategies to combat the transmission of COVID-19 in the public, while at the same time, the general public has also adopted personal strategies to ensure that they were safe from COVID-19 infection. At the personal level, some individuals have adjusted their food consumption pattern from “eating out” to “eating in”.

This chapter examines how individuals in Hong Kong negotiate the correlation between food consumption/food safety and the increase of risk and trust within the framework of food safety studies. In our study, we argued that “trust in people” and “trust in business” played critical role in enabling Hong Kong people to practice safe eating. At the same time, this chapter also argues that the mobilization and strategic use of “thick” interpersonal trust and “thin” trust in business helped to reduce ambiguity and complexity associated with what constitute a safe environment and safe collective group of people for food consumption during COVID-19 pandemic.