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Mediating Effects of Emotional Self-Efficacy on Food Consumption and Dietary Quality Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Web-Based Survey on Chinese Individuals (Preprint)


 BACKGROUND
 The prevalence of psychosocial distress is increasing worldwide, which impacts people’s dietary behaviors and habits. Preparing and cooking food may facilitate the mitigation of psychosocial distress during epidemic-related quarantines. Emotional self-efficacy (ESE) measures various aspects of perceiving and understanding emotions and helping others modulate their emotions. ESE affects dietary behaviors and habits and mediates the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and diet-related behavior.
 
 
 OBJECTIVE
 This study attempts to identify whether the predictor variable, socioeconomic status, and the criterion variable, dietary quality, form a linear relationship. The statistical association between SES and dietary quality may be higher when considering ESE than when it is not considered.
 
 
 METHODS
 A questionnaire survey was designed to evaluate the impact of ESE on food-related behavior and that of SES on dietary quality. Adults from Mainland China participated in a web-based survey from April to June 2020. Factor analysis was used to report the survey results and item reliability. Multiple linear regression was performed to identify the association between ESE and dietary behavior, and further analytics analyzed how socioeconomic factors affected the dietary quality of those who were influenced by food advertising promotion (FAP).
 
 
 RESULTS
 The data derived from 441 responses showed that the ESE scale exhibited satisfactory internal consistency and predictive validity for Chinese individuals. The COVID-19 pandemic significantly decreased the food-consumption level, particularly in the case of salty snacks and alcoholic beverages. The respondents who reported a higher SES tended to have a higher ESE level than those with a lower SES. ESE mediated the relationship between SES and dietary quality (β=-.019, P<.001). When considering the influence of ESE, the direct association between SES and dietary quality was stronger than when ESE was not considered (β=.094, P<.05). Furthermore, this direct relationship was stronger for those who were influenced by FAP (β=-.317, P<.05).
 
 
 CONCLUSIONS
 The relationship between SES and food consumption with regard to dietary quality is stronger for people who encounter environmental influences. ESE is a well-established tool for evaluating how people cope with negative emotions. The findings support the mediating impact of ESE on the conditional process linking SES to dietary quality, which provides further insights about the dynamic process of psychological constructs in behavioral outcomes. This study highlights that the lockdown imposed to contain an infectious agent affected people’s dietary behaviors and habits and advocates for organized nutritional support during future epidemic-related quarantines.
