College Student Health Beliefs and Food Label Use Behavior: The Mediating Role of Nutritional Knowledge

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-364-1_103How to use a DOI?

Keywords

health beliefs; food label use behavior; nutritional knowledge

Abstract

This study aims to explore the relationship between college students’ health beliefs and their behavior of using food labels, with a focus on the mediating role of nutritional knowledge. We collected data on health beliefs, knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding food nutrition labels, as well as nutritional knowledge, from a group of college students aged 18–25 at Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine through questionnaires. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS software, revealing the intrinsic connections between health beliefs, nutritional knowledge, and food label use behavior. The study hypothesized that there is a positive correlation between college students’ health beliefs and food label use behavior, that nutritional knowledge mediates this relationship, and that improving college students’ mastery of nutritional knowledge can indirectly promote their use of food labels in daily life. A questionnaire survey was conducted with 311 college students (aged 22 ± 3 years), and data processing was performed using SPSS. This study is not only an important supplement to the current research on college students’ healthy eating behaviors but also an in-depth exploration of health belief theory, nutritional knowledge education, and the effectiveness of food label design. The research focuses on college students aged 18–25 at Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, systematically collecting multi-dimensional data on their health beliefs, knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding food nutrition labels, and nutritional knowledge levels through a carefully designed questionnaire. It delves into the intrinsic relationships between these variables, especially how nutritional knowledge acts as a mediator between health beliefs and food label use behavior. This finding not only helps us better understand the formation mechanism of college students’ healthy eating behaviors but also provides strong data support and theoretical basis for the formulation of health education in colleges, optimization of food label design, and public health policies.

Jingan Tan and Yubo Yang contributed equally to this work and should be considered co-first authors.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Jingan Tan
AU  - Yubo Yang
AU  - Minghao Zhou
AU  - Zhiwei Huang
AU  - Ziyue Song
AU  - Mingzhe Wang
AU  - Mengyao Qu
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/03/17
TI  - College Student Health Beliefs and Food Label Use Behavior: The Mediating Role of Nutritional Knowledge
BT  - Proceedings of the 2024 4th International Conference on Education, Language and Art (ICELA 2024)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 834
EP  - 840
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-364-1_103
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-364-1_103
ID  - Tan2025
ER  -