Research On Influencing Factors And Evolution About The Social Trust Of Consumers On Food Safety

In recent years, food safety accidents happen frequently in China, not only endanger the lives and safety of consumers, but also seriously hurt the social trust of consumers, until impact the social harmony and stability. Lack of consumers’ social trust will have a serious impact on their willingness to buy. Once the mechanism of social trust was broken, it needs to go through a fairly lengthy repairing process. If there is any problem in food chain, there is a problem in social trust chain essentially. Totally, the level of consumers’ social trust is lower. Solving the crisis of social trust is of great urgency.Aimed at influencing factors about social trust of consumers, Chinese and foreign scholars have made studies about it from different views, but it is partial and scattered, the influencing factors of social trust on food safety are indeterminate. Meanwhile, there is not any systemic study on evolutionary mechanism of social trust, and the analysis of reconstructing evolutionary mechanism is even more deficient. Only by establishing perfect and reliable system of social trust, clearing the evolution process of social trust, can we prevent rumors extending, which leading to the social confusion when great events of food safety happen. Then, we can protect the benefits of consumers and guarantee the food industry a long period of stability.Based on the 2409 questionnaires about the social trust of consumers, the article uses empirical analysis to make study about the influencing factors and evolutionary mechanism of social trust. Firstly, the article makes research about present consumers’ confidence in food safety to know the current level of social trust through questionnaires. The results show that although consumers are generally concerned about food safety issues, they are lack of social trust, government management; types of food security, personal cognitive level and other factors are to some extent resulting in the occurrence of food safety incidents. Secondly, based on confidence-building model and factor analysis, the article constructs two logistic regression model to make an empirical analysis on the influencing factors about social trust of consumers on food safety. The results show that government management, types of food security, cognitive level, personal factors and other factors are important factors for social trust of consumers on food safety. The higher consumers evaluate government management, the safer they judge different kinds of food, the greater they think the current food security situation improve, the higher the level of social trust. In addition, consumers who have older age, higher education level, not act as managers have lower level of social trust on food safety. Thirdly, based on the perspective of dynamic evolution, the article makes research on the producing and formation of the process on social trust, which reveals the evolution discipline of social trust, and constructs the corresponding evolution model with establishing and improving the mechanism of evolution. Finally, the article puts forward relevant suggestions based on the above conclusions on empirical research, in order to protect the interests of consumers, thus providing a reference for improving the effectiveness of food safety management.