| "Hunger breeds discontent, food-an as the first", food is the necessities for human beings to sustain life and health. It is also the material base of all human social activities. Along with the improvement of life quality and health consciousness of people, food safety issues increasingly widespread concerned by governments, scholars and relevant interest groups. Despite various countries has strengthened food quality and safety management, food safety incidents continue to occur frequently. In recent decades, consumers have been confronted with various food safety incidents, such as Food-and-Mouth disease (FMD), Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), the presence of dioxins in the food chain, H5N1 Avian Influenza (AI), shoddy soybean, poisonous rice, clenbuterol, Sudan I, Sanlu milk power and so on, which have great harmfulness and wide influence surface that made food safety became one of the important social problems of global concern.The continuous accumulation of food safety incidents can affect the general consumer confidence in the safety of food in the long-term, which beyond consumers concern about the safety of specific hazards and product groups. That is, the accumulation of incidents might put much pressure on consumer confidence in the safety of food in general.Although our country has continuously increased the supervision of food safety, food safety in China is not optimistic from current situation. Generally, consumers concern about food safety issues, but lack confidence in the safety of food.Food safety is an important issue relate to consumers, food industry, as well as government regulatory institutions. Food safety does not only affect consumers' health and safety, but also lower public confidence in food industry and regulatory institutions, affect social economic order and obstruct the orderly and sustainable development of food industry. For example, those food safety incidents have, in the past, resulted in trade bans, price fluctuations, public health hazards, decreased consumption of products, culling of animals and damage to the image of food manufacturers. For the point of view on public health, consumers concern about the safety of particular food products might hamper a healthy food choice. For the point of view on consumer behaviors, changes in the level of consumer confidence will affect information search and food choice behaviors, such as brand choice, quality label choice, prices and retail choice. Moreover, food safety incidents and the identification of new potential food safety hazards, can lead to more media attention to food safety issues and lower consumer confidence in food safety and risk management. Consumer confidence in the safety of food can be defined as the extent to which consumer perceive that food is safe, while does not cause any harm to their health and the environment (De Jonge,2008). Insight in to consumer confidence in the safety of food and its determinants are not only helpful to obtain an in depth understanding of consumer perceptions and behaviors on the safety of food, but also have important practical implications for risk management and communication. In addition, monitoring consumer confidence in the safety of food is benefit for government regulatory institutions to better evaluate and adjust the policy measures about food safety management, to maintain and increase consumer confidence.This paper is an empirical research, through the survey of residents in some provinces and cities of China, to make an empirical analysis on the current situation of consumer confidence in the safety of food in China from general level. This paper use relevant theoretical basis of food safety for consumers as a guide, learn from the successful experience of foreign study, from the point of view on the influencing factors of consumer confidence in the safety of food, to construct the empirical model for consumer confidence in the safety of food. On the basis of obtaining the data from questionnaire, by using the software of SPSS 19.0 and LISREL 8.70 and applying an integrated analysis approach to evaluate current Chinese consumer confidence situation in the safety of food from a general level, insight into the empirical relationship between different emotional attitudes of consumer confidence in the safety of food and the influencing factors of consumer confidence in the safety of food, and analyze whether these factors make different effect on the different emotional attitudes of consumer confidence in the safety of food. In addition, to analyze the contribution of each observed variable to its corresponding factor. Lastly, present some proposals thus to enhance consumer confidence in the safety of food according to the research results. This paper makes a preliminary study on consumer confidence in the safety of food in China from the general level, which provides good foundation on the theoretical methods and empirical data for further study and also provide a reference for the research on the field of consumer confidence in the safety of food in China.The framework of this study is listed below:In the first chapter, introduces the research background, research status at home and abroad, the main contents and methods of the research, as well as the purpose and significance of this research.In the second chapter, firstly, summarizes the meanings of food safety, the influencing factors of food safety issues and the relevant theories of consumer psychology and behavior. Secondly, focuses on the definition of consumer confidence in the safety of food, influencing factors of consumer confidence in the safety of food and consequence of consumer confidence on consumer behavior.In the third chapter, firstly, describes the overall design of this study. Secondly, introduces the condition of questionnaire design and sampling investigation. Lastly, make a detailed analysis on the research data by using the statistical software of SPSS 19.0. This data analysis are consist of descriptive statistical analysis of sample, testing the reliability and validity for the questionnaire, the overall evaluation for consumer confidence in the safety of food, statistical analysis on the basic information of factors which potential affecting consumer confidence in the safety of food, as well as correlation coefficient test of variables.In the fourth chapter, firstly, summarizes the principal theory of structural equation modeling. Secondly, based on the structural equation modeling theory and actual research data, constructs the conceptual framework model of consumer confidence in the safety of food for this paper's empirical study, which including two independent conceptual models, namely "optimism" and "pessimism", with 14 latent variable and 63 observed indexes. This paper also makes an explanation for variables and indexes, and makes research hypotheses for "optimism" and "pessimism" model of consumer confidence in the safety of food. Furthermore, in order to examining the rationality of the conceptual framework model constructed, this study applies the maximum likelihood method in the structural equation modeling software of LISREL 8.70 and uses the methods of confirmatory factor analysis, to test the fit condition of the conceptual models from basic parameter estimation and overall fitting indexes these two aspects. In the meanwhile, based on the result obtain from path coefficient analysis, this study tests the research hypotheses on "optimism" and "pessimism" model by the method of statistical significance. Finally, according to the result of path coefficient analysis, analyzes and evaluates the data' practical assessing results for the models of consumer confidence in the safety of food, which including two parts, structural model result evaluation and measurement model result evaluation.In the fifth chapter, makes an summary for the empirical study of this paper, and aim at the research result of current consumer confidence situation in the safety of food in China, from the point of government, enterprise, farmer and consumer these four behavior subjects, present some proposals thus to enhance consumer confidence in the safety of food in China.The results of this empirical research show that currently Chinese consumers lack confidence in the safety of food in a general level, and they are more worried about the current situation of food safety in China. Consumer perceived safety of meat and processed foods, concern about the hazards of disease, production and health which are relative to food, trust in government regulatory institutions, farms and manufacturers, as well as trait worry have significant correlation with "optimism" and "pessimism"of consumer confidence in the safety of food. In addition, these factors have different influencing effect on these two emotional attitudes. |
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