从保护到拒绝：父母保护动机在预制食品消费中的作用

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.

Sec. Eating Behavior

• Liaoning University, Shenyang, China

Abstract

Background: Pre-prepared foods are increasingly popular because of their convenience but have also raised concerns about food safety and nutritional risks. Drawing on the evolutionary needs perspective and protection motivation theory, this study examines the association between parental protection motivation and consumers' purchase intention toward pre-prepared foods, as well as the mediating role of perceived risk and the moderating roles of health consciousness and information sensitivity in the mediation process. Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted with 985 Chinese consumers. Confirmatory factor analysis in AMOS 28.0 assessed the measurement model, while PROCESS Model 4 and two Model 7 analyses in SPSS 30.0, using 5,000 bootstrap resamples, tested mediation and moderated mediation, respectively. Results: Parental protection motivation was negatively associated with purchase intention toward pre-prepared foods (β = -0.173, p < 0.001). Perceived risk significantly mediated this relationship (indirect effect = -0.280, 95% CI [−0.372, −0.196]). The indices of moderated mediation were significant for both health consciousness (index = -0.185, 95% CI [-0.282, -0.112]) and information sensitivity (index = 0.066, 95% CI [0.016, 0.123]). The mediating effect was significant at high but not low levels of health consciousness, whereas it was significant at low but not high levels of information sensitivity. Conclusion: Parental protection motivation was associated with lower purchase intention through perceived risk, and this mediating effect was stronger at higher levels of health consciousness but weaker at higher levels of information sensitivity. These findings deepen the protection-oriented explanation of parenting-related motives in consumer behavior and complement research on pre-prepared food consumption by directing attention beyond proximate explanations toward an ultimate-level motivational antecedent.

Keywords

Health consciousness, information sensitivity, Parental protection motivation, perceived risk, Pre-prepared food

Received

04 July 2026

Accepted

17 September 2026

Copyright

© 2026 Yuan and Ma. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

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