Research Background
As a response to the changing food consumption behaviors, it is necessary to conduct multi-faceted surveys on a continuous basis to identify food consumption trends. However, statistics the government have approved in food consumption focus only on the survey regarding food spending, while the surveys on the other areas remain very insufficient. There has not been any survey performed to show the overall aspects of food consumption behaviors.
To understand food consumption behaviors in detail and to use them as a useful analytical basis for production activities and policy development, a representative sampling is necessary. With the samples, surveys should be conducted on a regular basis for research and analysis of food consumption behaviors.

Research Method
For the 2018 survey, we designed a new combined sample using both existing and newly extracted samples from census output areas of Statistics Korea.
This survey includes the key areas as follows: consumers’ perception on their food consumption patterns (e. g. food choices, nutrition, health, etc.) on food purchase and on consumption behaviors; food consumer characteristics; eating-out patterns; consumers’ self-evaluation on their food consumption patterns; the current status of food consumption education and promotion; lifestyle, agri-food consumer empowerment index, and key policy issues. In this study, we developed a two-step survey. First, the household-level survey was designed to ask the primary food purchaser of a household regarding food consumption status and characteristics of the family. Secondly, the household member-level survey was designed to ask any household members (13∼74 years of age) with regards to their food consumption status outside of home and individual perceptions on food consumption. Adolescent respondents were provided a different set of questionnaire in consideration of their limited experiences in food consumption.

Research Results and Implications
The survey found that 41.4% of the households surveyed buy food twice to three times per week and 44.2% of them buy food once a week. This indicates that the majority of the households surveyed or 85.6% purchase food once to three times per week. For the question about the preferred place for grocery shopping, 33.2% said they buy food at large-scale retail stores, followed by 30.5% who buy food at medium or small-sized local grocery stores or supermarkets. 17.7% of the family visit medium or small-sized grocery stores run by major companies. 36.8% of the households surveyed buy their food on the online grocery shop and they gave 3.7 points and 3.8 points on a five-point scale as a score respectively for price level and quality satisfaction. Environment-friendly food buyers who account for 55.1% of the
respondents gave 3.5 points for price level and 3.7 points for quality satisfaction. 74.9% of the surveyed households are found to consume functional foods, and in particular specific food supplements such as vitamin (58.7%) and red ginseng/ginseng (44.7%) are consumed at a high percentage.
For the purchase frequency of rice, the households who buy rice every two to three months account for 59.1%. For the purchase frequency of vegetables, 44.5% of the households surveyed replied once a week and they prefer bulk buying to the small-package purchase (51.9%). For the purchase frequency of fruits, 51.9% said once a week. Adult household members are found to prefer apples and watermelons, while the household members aged 20 or below relatively prefer strawberries and apples to other fruits. The critical consumer considerations for vegetable and fruit purchase include freshness, country of
origin and price. When it comes to vegetables, country of origin comes first (15.0%). The key consumer considerations for meat purchase are freshness (31.7%) and country of origin (17.6%). 26.8% of the households surveyed had no intention to purchase imported beef from the United States, but a relatively high percentage of the respondents (47.3%) expressed ‘intention to eat’ imported beef from Australia. 38.4% of the households surveyed answered ‘no intention to eat’ imported pork. It is found that most of the households are getting kimchi for their own consumption from ‘family members/relatives
(47.5%)’ and many households make kimchi on their own (42.0%).
Homemakers surveyed gave 3.5 points for their satisfaction level on a five-point scale with the current food consumption patterns. At the individual level, adults’ satisfaction score for their food consumption patterns and adolescents’ are 3.5 points and 3.7 points respectively. Adults are interested in whether food ingredients are domestically produced (3.5 points), and the levels of interest in local produce (3.3 points) and environmentally friendly (3.3 points) produce are similar. By contrast, adolescents showed relatively lower levels of interest in the characteristics of food ingredients, such as domestic production (3.3 points), local production (3.1 points) or green production (3.0 points).
Those who said the family eats out once per two weeks account for 30.5%, and food's taste (40.8%) is as the most crucial factor to choose restaurants.
About 74.8% of the households surveyed use food-delivery or take-out services for family dining. When the number of household members is higher, families tend to use more of food delivery or take-out services. The first choices of delivery/take-out food are chicken dishes (40.6%) including fried chicken. Those who don’t use food delivery/take-out services cited high prices (26.9%), bad taste (18.3%), and over-use of chemical seasoning (14.1%) as the reasons for avoiding food-delivery/take-out services.
The questions concerning food-related consumption policy show that adults (34.0%) chose ‘ensuring food safety’ as the most important policy. Around three adolescents out of ten and five adults out of ten were interested in food safety issues, and 64.2% of the adult respondents expressed their intention to pay higher prices for more safe food. On the scale of 1 to 5 where 5 is the highest score for the safety perception, adult and adolescent respondents gave above 3.5 points on domestic food, which are relatively high scores. In respect of individual imported items, the safety perception score is around 2.8
point. which show lower than domestic counterparts. For the question regarding who should play the most important role in food safety management, the food producers top the list, followed by the central
government, the local government, food distributors and food retailers.
Concerning food labeling, adult consumers are likely to check prices and countries of origin most on the purchase of vegetables and meat, whereas they check the expiration date and prices as a priority consideration on the purchase of processed foods. Concerning the awareness of food labeling programs, country of origin labeling system (96.4%) and organic farming certification system (91.0%) are the most well known. 39.0% of the adult respondents chose lower grades of the elementary school as the best time for basic food education, followed by higher grades of the elementary school (21.6%), middle school (18.4%) and early childhood (14.6%).
The survey on food consumption behavior is expected to provide basic research for the government when it establishes food policies and for companies when they conduct market analysis. In order to improve the credibility and utilization of the survey outcomes, feedback from the survey users needs to be collected and be used to revise the survey design. In addition, follow-up management will be done, and statistics in the survey will be open for the public.

Researchers: Lee Kyei-im, Kim Sang-hyo, Heo Seong-yoon, Choi Jae-hyun, Park In-ho
Research period: 2018. 1. ∼ 2018. 12.
E-mail address: lkilki@krei.re.kr