Food Protection Trends - September/October 2020 - 305

FIGURE 2. Models of self-efficacy (a), self-regulation (b), outcome expectations (c), and environmental determinants
(d) as predictors of self-reported food safety behaviors mediated by food safety behaviroal intentions.

research indicated that cultural traditions of foodservice
employees in ethnic restaurants influence the extent to which
standard food safety practices are followed (34).
The lowest mean score for the environmental determinants
was related to sufficiency of financial resources to support
hygiene and food safety. This result verified the importance
of providing appropriate equipment and supplies for
following proper food safety practices and highlighted the
lack of financial resources allocated to support food safety in
small independent ethnic restaurants. Similarly, a previous
study indicated that the nature of most independent ethnic
restaurants as small-scale businesses with limited resources
could affect efforts to improve food safety (50). This result is
also consistent with several studies that showed that lack of
financial resources was a barrier to improving food safety in
independent ethnic restaurants (27, 49, 56).
The highest mean score for the construct of outcome
expectations was for the item related to protecting restaurants
from liability for foodborne illnesses. This result suggested
that respondents perceived protecting their operations
from liability as the most important positive outcome of
performing proper handwashing, handling of food and work
surfaces, and use of a thermometer. The SCT posits that a
behavior can be affected by one's anticipation of how they
will feel about themselves if they do or do not perform that
behavior (52). Thus, educating food handlers about the
positive outcomes of performing food safety behaviors would
act as an incentive to follow proper food safety practices to

protect themselves and their operation from liability.
The composite mean score result of the food safety
behavioral intentions construct suggested that respondents
had high intention of performing proper handling of food
and less intention to use a food thermometer. This may be
attributed to employees' cultural influence, which caused
them to use their own methods to check the doneness of
foods, or to having less time to check the temperature of
food. Similarly, in a previous study using a seven-point Likert
scale to measure behavioral intention, it was found that
foodservice employees in the investigated restaurants had less
intention to use a thermometer (6.20 ± 1.16), compared with
sanitizing surfaces (6.57 ± 1.16) and handwashing (6.48 ±
0.96) (59).
Although the results of this study showed that food
handlers had high self-efficacy and self-regulation and
scored favorably in all behaviors, they scored low in the
use of a thermometer at the completion of cooking and
reheating. This could be attributed to lack of motivation,
lack of risk perception, lack of time, and/or unavailability of
food thermometers (48). In a study that investigated selfreported and observed food handling behaviors of Hispanic
food handlers in a home setting, the researchers found that
47% of participants reported being confident of their own
method for determining cooking doneness, and 28% of them
mentioned that inability to use a thermometer was a reason
for not using it (22).

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Food Protection Trends - September/October 2020

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