Consumers' Preference And Willingness To Pay For Food Safety And Quality Attributes Of Traceable Food

Food safety risks is becoming a major problem for consumers around the world.As a large food consumption country.China is one of the most seriously harmed countries because of safety incident.The food traceability system provides information on various safety links in the supply chain,not only ensuring the safety of food as much as possible,but also making the entire food production process more transparent to consumers,thus effectively easing consumers and producers.The system is recognized and used by many countries as one of the main tools to fundamentally prevent food safety risks.However,food safety incidents have occurred frequently in recent years,indicating that the construction of food traceability system has not achieved the expected goals,and China's food safety policy has not played an effective role.One of the most important reasons is that the food traceability system implemented in China does not fully consider the preferences and needs of most consumers.Consumers' demand for government regulatory information and certification information has not received sufficient attention.Taking traceable apple as an example,this paper studies consumer preferences and willingness to pay for traceable food quality and safety attributes based on 2092 consumer survey data in six cities of Beijing,Shanghai,Guangzhou,Xi'an,Jinan and Harbin.First of all,this study sets four attributes of traceability information,quality certification,origin and price.In this study,the traceability information attributes were set to include four levels of "planting,processing and sales information","planting and processing information" and "planting information" and "no traceability information";the quality certification attribute was set to government certification,domestic third-party agency certification,international third-party agency certification and no certification;the apple origin attribute is set to Xinjiang,Shandong,Shanxi and no origin;the price attribute is set to 6 yuan/500g,8 yuan/500g,10 yuan/500g and 12 yuan/500g.Second,conduct a field survey of consumers and obtain survey data.Finally,using the mixed logit model,empirical analysis of consumer preferences and willingness to pay for traceable food quality and safety attributes.The conclusions of this paper will help to provide useful decision-making reference for the government to strengthen and improve the traceability system suitable for China.The main conclusions of this study are:First,consumers have different preferences for traceable Apple's quality and safety attributes.Consumers pay the most attention to traceability information,followed by quality certification attributes,and finally origin attributes.Second,consumers have the highest willingness to pay for the attributes of traceability information,quality certification,and origin attributes,such as "traceable information including planting,processing,and sales",government certification,and origin of Shandong producing areas.Third,the demographic characteristics of consumers' gender,age,education level and family monthly income level significantly affect consumers' preference for traceable apple quality and safety attributes.