The project aims to design scientifically accurate and informative narrative messages to promote better safe-food preparation compliance and prevent illness and death. The project should also increase scholars` understanding of the risk-communication process and the process of developing and designing more effective health and safety messages.

Despite public health campaigns, many consumers do not follow recommended safe food preparation practices resulting in $10-83 billion in medical costs, about 76 million illnesses, more than 300,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths in the United States each year. Research shows current food safety campaigns using informational advocacy messages are often ineffective. Better compliance may be possible through the use of narrative messages. Research shows stories are a natural mode for people to process information. Narrative messages can be more persuasive and memorable than statistical information and advocacy messages. They are also more effective than advocacy messages in overcoming resistance by reducing counterarguing. Narrative messages can also model effective behaviors when people find it difficult to perform food safety behaviors.

A number of target households with extensive knowledge of food safety practices but poor compliance have been identified. Focus groups, surveys and experiments explored reasons for non-compliance and have tested messages.

Compliance with recommended home food safety messages seems to be determined by multiple attitudinal, social, practical and risk perception issues. One finding that does not seem well-accounted for by existing health and risk behavior models is that home cooks` motivation to present themselves to others as experienced cooks is both a reason for non-compliance (for example, people who use food thermometers are perceived as appearing to be inexperienced cooks) and may also be a motivation for complying with recommendations (washing your hands because others might notice). Other barriers to compliance include negative beliefs about the convenience, comfort, resulting food quality, financial and social costs, and response efficacy of recommended practices along with inadequate risk perception and insufficient detailed knowledge. Based on survey data and experimental data we found that liking for media characters and characters in public service announcements is strongly related to identification with perceived ideal characteristics of a character and with the realism of the character. Attention to these aspects of narrative public service announcements should help to create more effective food safety announcements.