Food safety is a major global public issue (1). Numerous studies have shown that it is difficult to avoid government or market failure, either alone or combined, by relying solely on the government or market, or on both government and market together to manage food safety risks. The traditional governance model has been unable to effectively meet the consumption needs of the society (2, 3). Ensuring food safety is the common responsibility of all stakeholders (4). In fact, the phenomenon of social co-governance first emerged in the 1960s and 1970s and since developed as a new governance model in Western countries. It has now become the most basic model for managing food safety risks in Western countries (5, 6). Although China has different national conditions from Western countries, the Chinese government has begun to reform the country's governance model over the last two decades, especially since 2012 (7), and the revised Food Safety Law has established social co-governance as the basic principle for managing food safety risks. At present, the academic community generally agrees that food safety social co-governance means that stakeholders, including the government, enterprises (market), social organizations, and citizens, jointly formulate or participate in the formulation of laws, regulations, and rules, coordinate and cooperate with each other, and fulfill their respective responsibilities in accordance with the law to jointly ensure food safety with low governance costs in an open, transparent, and flexible manner (8–10).

In a general sense, a citizen is a person who has citizenship and thus has certain rights as well as obligations in accordance with the laws of that country. According to Baidu Encyclopedia, it represents the concept of an individual, whereas the public is a collection of individual citizens and also includes legal persons and other organizations. Richard (11) argued that citizens are the best judges of their own behavior. Citizens capable of independent behavior are not simply food consumers. They should not only bear the responsibility of self-protection (12), but can also act as the best regulators of food safety. Following the inclusion of food safety in China's national security system in 2011, the food safety co-governance system has been gradually improved, and a consensus has gradually emerged regarding the role of social co-governance; the concept of “citizen,” with its connotation of responsibilities as well as rights, reflects the internal logic of this modernization of China's national governance system and governance capabilities. As such, they are an important force in social co-governance, playing an irreplaceable role (11, 13). For example, citizens can provide tip-offs to the media and regulatory agencies, report complaints and violations, and use the media to urge the government to strengthen food safety regulation. In this way, they play a unique role in improving food safety and become an important force in social co-governance (14, 15).

Studies in Western countries have shown that individual psychological capital (PsyCap) can ignite positive emotions in citizens and motivate them to actively participate in public affairs (10, 16), thus constituting the micro-psychological foundation of food safety social co-governance (10). Unlike Western countries, food safety incidents still occur frequently in China at its current stage of development, and food safety remains one of the top concerns among Chinese citizens (17). However, at present, most Chinese citizens merely play the role of passive consumer (18), and do not actively participate in co-governance (19). Starting from the practice in Western countries and the concept of PsyCap, how can the positive emotions of Chinese citizens to participate in co-governance be ignited and their PsyCap be improved? What are the individual characteristics of citizens who have high PsyCap and will actively participate in social co-governance? These questions have not been adequately answered in the literature. To this end, this study aims to offer an exploratory introduction of the concept PsyCap and its four dimensions, establish an analytical framework for the relationship between the characteristics and PsyCap of citizens who participate in co-governance, and examine the differences in the PsyCap of citizens with different individual characteristics based on a micro-level survey. The results of this study may provide a scientific basis for understanding how to motivate citizens to actively participate in social co-governance, and thus promote the construction of a new mechanism for food safety social co-governance in China.

The concept of PsyCap first appeared in the economics and sociology literature. However, it was long believed that PsyCap was difficult to measure due to its instability, variability, and tendency to undergo dynamic changes (20). Only after Goldsmith et al. (21) found a correlation between an individual's PsyCap and income did PsyCap begin to be measurable, developable, and manageable. However, Goldsmith et al. (21) did not clearly define the concept of PsyCap. To address the situation whereby the field of psychology paid too much attention to human weakness and negative psychology, Seligman (22) proposed the concept of positive psychology, trying to direct psychology research to harness the power of progress and social virtues. This groundbreaking idea triggered intense research on PsyCap and its relationship with positive behavior. Avolio et al. (23) believed that PsyCap is a positive psychological state that affects individual emotions and improves their behavior. Luthans et al. (24) further proposed the concept of positive PsyCap (referred to simply as PsyCapfor short hereafter) based on the inclusion criteria of positive organizational behavior (i.e., being positive, measurable, open to development, and performance-influencing, and having a theoretical rationale) and defined it as a positive psychological state shown by an individual in the process of growth and development. It is the core psychological element that transcends human and social capital, and is a psychological resource that promotes personal growth.

Although the concept of PsyCap has not yet been adequately studied, it can be understood from the following three perspectives based on existing research. The first perspective is trait theory, which suggests that PsyCap is an inherent trait of individuals. Hosen et al. (25) believed that PsyCap is a basic psychological quality that is durable, relatively stable, and acquired through long-term investment, such as learning. Casey and Grzywacz (26) equated PsyCap with personality, which is a result of both nature and nurture. The second perspective is state theory, which posits that PsyCap is a positive psychological state that affects individual behavior, and is a complex culmination of various individual psychological factors (27). Goldsmith (21) pointed out that PsyCap includes self-perception, attitudes toward work, ethical orientation, and general outlook on life. Tettegah (28) understood PsyCap as a complex phenomenon formed by the interaction of self-perception, attitudes toward work, ethical orientation, beliefs about life, values, and consciousness;PsyCap is seen as having the ability to change behavior by influencing an individual's psychological state. The third perspective is the synthesis theory, which suggests that PsyCap is a state-like resource and a psychological quality with characteristics of both trait and state that can be effectively developed in a specific manner. At present, synthesis theory has predominated in terms of understanding PsyCap (29).

Since the start of the twenty-first century, the study of PsyCap has been extended to the field of human resource management. Ke et al. (30) found that male employees generally had higher PsyCap than female employees, and that age and PsyCap were generally positively correlated. Fang (31) pointed out that adolescents' PsyCap increased with age. Sui et al. (32) found that individual characteristics, such as education and years of working, were correlated with PsyCap and job performance. Babalola (33) suggested that individuals with higher education were more likely to have higher levels of self-confidence and optimism. Cole et al. (34) found that individuals with higher economic income and social status had higher PsyCap. Ke et al. (35) reported that age, gender, education, and years of working all had a significant impact on the PsyCap of Chinese employees.

However, other studies have found no significant correlation between individual characteristics and PsyCap. For example, Avey (36) used 1,264 engineers from American Airlines and 524 technicians from China Telecom as comparative samples. Among the US employees, although age was shown to be correlated with PsyCap, no distinct differences in PsyCap caused by age, gender, or employment duration were observed. Among the Chinese employees, age, gender, or employment duration did not significantly affect PsyCap. Similarly, Luthans et al. (37) found no significant correlation of PsyCap with gender, age, or education. Likewise, Mathe-Soulek et al. (38) found no significant correlation between individual characteristics, such as gender and age, and PsyCap in a study of employee performance in the restaurant industry.

The above literature review discussed the nature of PsyCap in terms of trait, state, and synthesis. However, PsyCap has a very rich meaning. In terms of meaning, it is agreed that PsyCap is both a state and a trait. It is neither purely a state, like emotions, i.e., something transient, variable, and unstable, nor purely a trait, like personality and physical characteristics, which are difficult to change. Instead, it is state-like and can be developed through interventions (9–40). Moreover, the literature on PsyCap in the field of human resource management shows the existence of many relationships between PsyCap and individual characteristics of citizens; these relationships are not fixed, but vary with the public affairs and external scenarios involved. However, no answer has been provided to the question of how to measure the relationship between individual characteristics and PsyCap of citizens who participate in food safety social co-governance. Therefore, it may be worth exploring the topic to establish a framework for analyzing the relationship between characteristics and PsyCap of citizens who participate in co-governance based on their PsyCap composition.

Luthans et al. (41) suggested that self-efficacy, resilience, optimism, and hope are the four most basic core elements that constitute measurable state-like PsyCap and significantly affect individual attitudes and behaviors. These factors may provide insight into developing a framework for analyzing the relationship between characteristics and PsyCap of citizens who participate in co-governance.

Stajkovic et al. (42) defined self-efficacy as “an individual's convictions (or confidence) about his or her abilities to mobilize the motivation, cognitive resources, and courses of action needed to successfully execute a specific task within a given context.” According to Parker and Sharon (43), self-efficacy refers to an individual's confidence about their abilities to face challenges, do their job, and strive to succeed. In terms of food safety, as the main topic of the present study, a survey by Ovca et al. (44) showed that most students in Sloveniawere confident in handling food safely. Haapala and Probart (45) suggested that middle school students in central Pennsylvania had high self-efficacy in food handling and food safety issues. Moreover, females had significantly higher self-efficacy than males, and this gap increased with age. Similarly, Richards and Beavers (46) found that adolescents in six southeastern US states were confident in their ability to influence food safety and exhibited strong self-efficacy. Schafer et al. (47) investigated the impact of different individual characteristics, including age, gender, marriage status, household size, employment status, education, and income, on food safety attitudes and behaviors by using them as independent variables. They found that individuals who were female, elderly, or had a large household size had higher self-efficacy and were more likely to actively participate in food safety risk management. Cater et al. (48) suggested pregnant women were highly confident in knowing how to keep foods safe for consumption based on a random survey of 222 pregnant women from Louisiana and surrounding areas in the United States. Gase et al. (49) found that increasing the availability of healthy food helped to increase people's self-efficacy regarding their ability to eat healthy.

Resilience is the ability of individuals, families, or groups to quickly recover from adversity, setbacks, and failures and actively change their mentality (50). Bestor (51) and Rosenberger (52) suggested that due to doubts about imported food, many citizens in Japanoften turn to domestic products as a safer and more reliable substitute for imported food. Khanna et al. (53) and Lutz et al. (54) found that better diet quality, which means higher intake of vegetables and fruits, was associated with higher resilience. Whatnall et al. (55) found that a healthy diet helped improve psychological health and resilience in a survey of Australian college students. That study further found that college students with an unhealthy diet had poorer psychological health than the average person. Ren (56) pointed out that individuals with higher education and income levels were more sensitive to food safety, more cautious about food safety incidents, and able to manage their panic. Wang et al. (57) found a slower recovery of consumer confidence among citizens with higher income. They suggested this may be because the consumer confidence of high-income households is more severely affected by food safety incidents and more difficult to restore due to their original higher trust in food safety. Ren and Han (58) suggested that resilience is related to occupation and that food safety incidents do not significantly change the consumption of that category of food by individuals in food-related occupations. Likewise, Li et al. (59) reported that after the 2008 melamine-tainted milk powder crisis in China, Chinese citizens with more children or lower incomes had higher resilience than those with fewer children or higher incomes and were more confident in domestic infant milk powder.

Optimism is a positive attitude toward current and future success expectations (60). Optimistic individuals have less anxiety and are more inclined to express happy emotions; positive expectations for the future indicate their inner confidence and are the source of optimism (61). Jonge et al. (62) defined individual confidence in food safety as a psychological attitude that food safety is generally controllable and will not harm their health. A series of food safety incidents in China, such as the Shineway clenbuterol crisis, the cadmium-contaminated rice incident in Hunan province, and the Shanghai Fuxi food incident, have affected the confidence of Chinese citizens in future food safety (63). Ren et al. (64) surveyed Chinese consumers of different classes and found that individuals with an older age, higher education, or higher income had a higher food safety knowledge and lower confidence in food safety in China. According to Wang and Gu (65), more than 70% of Chinese citizens believed that Western developed countries had a higher level of food safety. A survey by Cheng et al. (66) found that middle school students in Beijing were pessimistic about food safety in China. Jonge et al. (62) reported that individuals with higher education were more optimistic about food safety, but the elderly were more pessimistic. Jonge et al. (67) also found a significant positive correlation between education and optimism about food safety among Canadian and Dutch consumers.

Hope provides individuals with lasting beliefs, positive expectations, and motivation for sustained efforts to achieve their goals (68). Liu et al. (69) reported that highly-educated female citizens aged 35–54 years expressed the strongest desire for the right to know about genetically modified foods. Zhang and Zhang (70) argued that gender, age, education, income, and household size are important factors that affect individual expectations for future food safety. Nan et al. (71) found that citizens with poor health were more sensitive to food safety risks due to concerns about their own health. Ye (72) suggested that individuals with higher education and income paid more attention to health, were more willing to search for food safety information and learn how to identify safe food, and were more aware of protecting their own rights when experiencing food safety issues. Sternsdorff-Cisterna (73) found that after the end of nuclear radiation crisis in Japan, Japanese women with children were skeptical of the government's commitment to food safety and were more willing to participate in food safety risk management.

To date, few studies have directly investigated the relationship between individual characteristics and PsyCap of citizens willing to participate in co-governance. However, research in other related fields provides a useful reference for thinking about this unexplored issue. Caprara et al. (74) found that the self-efficacy of Italian voters in political participation varied with gender, age, education, and income, and that voters participated actively only when they thought they were capable of handling political affairs. Zani and Barrett (75) reached a similar conclusion, and pointed out that the enthusiasm of citizens for political participation was not only affected by individual psychological factors, but also by the macro-environment. Crocetti et al. (76) found that US youths had higher political self-efficacy and higher levels of involvement in political activities than Italian youths. Zhao et al. (77) included gender, age, marital status, and education as control variables, and found that the PsyCap of college teachers to participate in public affairs was significantly related to age and education. Wang and Jiang (78) reported that female farmers were more willing to participate in the joint management of agricultural product safety risks than male farmers. Xu et al. (79) suggested that the PsyCap of migrant workers was significantly influenced by years of education, health status, and income. Jang (80) found that government employees aged over 40 years had higher PsyCap to participate in public affairs than younger ones. Therefore, there may be a correlation between occupation and the PsyCap to participate in social governance.

Citizens can be considered the basic unit in food safety risk management. In general, citizens have different consumption attitudes and food safety perceptions due to differences in individual characteristics such as gender, age, income, education, and household size (81, 82). Nayga (83) investigated the relationship between individual characteristics and attention to food safety and found that housewives with low education and income were more likely to perceive food safety risks. Baker (84) suggested that women and individuals with children in the household were most likely to avoid food safety risks. Flynn et al. (85) believed that gender was an important factor affecting individual perception of food safety risks. Both Dosman et al. (86) and Finke and Kim (87) confirmed the finding of Flynn et al. (85), and suggested that females were more concerned about food safety than males. Sternsdorff-Cisterna (73) reported that nearly 20% more Japanese females than males thought that nuclear radiation would cause serious harm to food safety, and thus argued that females were more willing to participate in food safety co-governance.

Dosman et al. (86) suggested that age is also a factor affecting food safety attitudes, and that the elderly are more worried about the health threats of pesticide residues in food. Roe et al. (88) pointed out that households with low income and education showed higher risk aversion and paid more attention to food safety. Wu et al. (89) believed that public perception of food safety risks is significantly related to individual characteristics such as age, gender, education, and income. According to Luthans (90), individual characteristics influence the PsyCap of citizens by acting on self-efficacy, resilience, optimism, and hope. Therefore, it can be argued that the differences in the perception and attitudes of citizens with different individual characteristics regarding food safety issues are attributable to differences in individual PsyCap. However, there are few studies that systematically examine the relationship among individual characteristics, PsyCap, and attitudes toward participation in food safety social co-governance.

In summary, numerous pioneering studies have been conducted on individual characteristics that associate with PsyCap. However, most of these studies only investigated the correlation between one or several individual characteristics and PsyCap. Studies have rarely incorporated age, income, education, marriage, occupation, gender, health status, and household size into a system to construct a collection of characteristics and comprehensively examine the correlation among several individual, family, and social characteristics in the collection and PsyCap. Furthermore, no studies have presented a complete framework for analyzing the relationship between characteristics and PsyCap of citizens. Therefore, drawing on existing literature, this study develops a 16-item scale to measure the PsyCap of citizens who participate in food safety social co-governance based on the four dimensions that are generally believed to constitute PsyCap, namely self-efficacy, resilience, optimism, and hope (90). Moreover, the scale is revised based on a pre-survey and tested for reliability and validity. On this basis, the effects of citizen characteristics on the four dimensions are analyzed using Student's t-test, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and post-hoc multiple comparisons to examine the relationship between the characteristics and PsyCap of citizens who participate in food safety social co-governance. Based on the meaning and four-dimensional composition of PsyCap, this study develops the original analytical framework as shown in Figure 1 to thoroughly examine the relationship between the characteristics and PsyCap of citizens who participate in food safety social co-governance. This framework clearly describes the process used in this study to explore ways to improve the psychological level of citizens to increase active participation in social co-governance.

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/Supplementary Material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding authors.

Ethical approval for this study and written informed consent from the participants of the study were not required in accordance with local legislation and national guidelines. All data were de-identified and the article does not contain any individual person's data. Therefore, this study was exempted from ethics approval.

LW conceptualized the study. KQ processed and analyzed the relevant data, as well as wrote the draft manuscript. XC collected and analyzed the relevant data, wrote, and revised the manuscript. All authors contributed to the study design, interpretation the results and manuscript revision, and have approved the final manuscript.

This study was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China: Research on social co-governance of food safety risks and cross-border cooperative governance mechanism (20&ZD117).

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.