Beyond Cheap Eats: Behavioural Insights for Consumer Regulation in the Street Food Sector

Abstract

Street food markets present a persistent consumer-regulation paradox: consumers continue to rely on informal vendors despite salient food-safety, environmental, and mobility risks. Drawing on behavioural insights, this study examines how urban consumers in Hanoi, Vietnam, evaluate affordability, spatial convenience, relational vendor trust, cultural authenticity, and perceived risks when forming attitudes and intentions to continue purchasing. Using survey data from 519 street-food consumers and partial least squares structural equation modelling, the study finds that economic benefits, spatial convenience, and local cultural authenticity significantly improve attitudes toward street food. In contrast, perceived food-safety risk and perceived urban environmental risk significantly reduce them. Contrary to expectations, relational vendor trust does not significantly shape attitude, suggesting a boundary condition of relationship-based trust in increasingly risk-aware urban food environments. Attitude strongly predicts continued purchase intention and mediates most relationships between consumer perceptions and behavioural intention. The study contributes to consumer policy by showing that exclusionary enforcement is unlikely to reduce demand where convenience and affordability remain structurally powerful. Instead, behaviourally informed regulation should preserve spatial access while making hygiene quality more visible, comparable, and verifiable through graded certification, salient cleanliness cues, and community-based vendor governance. These findings advance debates on how behavioural insights can inform consumer protection in informal food markets.