| The 19 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out that "to make people feel at ease,we must adopt corresponding strategies in food." The existence of food safety problems has not only caused widespread distress to international people’s livelihood,but also an important political issue.The Food Safety Law promulgated and implemented in 1995 is a major piece of legislation adopted by China to improve the overall state of food safety.However,since the dairy product contamination occurred in 2008,various frequent food safety incidents have continued to impact It is the psychological bottom line of consumers on food safety.Market failure caused by information asymmetry is one of the root causes of food safety incidents.By providing consumers with food quality information labels to achieve pre-quality assurance and post-responsibility tracing,will help to alleviate the phenomenon of food market failure.Providing food quality assurance labels(organic labels,geographical indications of agricultural products,brand labels)can realize pre-quality assurance,which is an important decision basis for consumers when making food choices.Providing food traceability information labels(planting traceability information labels,marketing traceability information labels)is one of the best ways to solve the problem of information asymmetry and achieve post-responsibility tracing.How to improve consumers’ willingness to pay for food quality information labels scientifically and effectively is the key to solving food safety problems.Therefore,this paper starts from researching consumers’ preferences for food quality information labels and finds effective channels to alleviate food safety incidents.Based on a high-level summary of relevant domestic and foreign literature,taking Yantai apple as an example,and implements random nth-price auction experiment and menu selection experiment to estimate consumers’ willingness to pay for food quality assurance labels and food traceability information labels.Then,it constructs a Logit model to examine the interaction between various food quality information labels.A controlled experiment was used to analyze the effect of introducing the knowledge of food quality assurance and food traceability system to the participants on consumer preferences.The results showed that:(1)Compared with conventional apples,consumers are generally willing to pay higher prices for apples with food quality information labels.The order of consumers’ preference for foodquality information labels is: organic label > planting traceability information label >marketing traceability information label > enterprise brand label > cooperative brand label > geographical indication of agricultural products;Information intervention can significantly increase consumers’ willingness to pay for organic label and traceable information label,while the influence of enterprise brand label,cooperative brand label and geographical indication of agricultural products’ preferences are relatively small.(2)Consumers’ willingness to pay for different food quality information labels is heterogeneous;Consumers’ willingness to pay for food quality information labels will generally be affected by the individual characteristics of the consumer,the degree of label awareness,food safety concerns,and their own health concerns Degree,etc.(3)Among the six kinds of food quality information labels,the organic label has the highest selection frequency;Compared with the selection frequency of cooperative brand labels,consumers choose enterprise brand labels to be selected much more frequently than cooperative brand labels;Respondents who received information intervention select food quality information labels more frequently than those who did not receive information intervention.(4)There is a significant two-way substitution relationship between organic label and geographical indications of agricultural products,and there is a one-way complementary relationship with brand labels;A one-way complementary relationship exists between geographical indication of agricultural products and brand labels;There is a two-way substitution relationship between enterprise brand label and cooperative brand label;There is a two-way complementary relationship between planting traceable label and marketing traceability label.(5)There is a two-way substitution relationship between the organic label and the two traceability information labels;There is a difference in the relationship between geographical indication of agricultural products and the traceability information labels in the reference group and the experimental group.In the experimental group,the traceability information label can unilaterally replace the geographical indication of agricultural products;There is a two-way substitution relationship between the brand labels and the traceability information labels.The innovations of this paper are as follows:(1)Use non-hypothetical auction experiment to simulate the real market environment,and use hypothetical menu selection experiment to measure consumers’ willingness to pay for specific attributes of products(ie food quality information labels).Combined with the advantages of non-hypothetical experimental methods to make up for their respective shortcomings,a useful exploration of methods to estimate consumer preferences was conducted.(2)Based on the random n-price auction experiment,the WTP of food quality information labels was estimated,and the menu selection experiment was designed and implemented to explore the interaction between various food quality information labels;(3)The consumers who accept the knowledge of food quality information label are divided into the experimental group,and the consumers who do not accept the knowledge of food quality information label are divided into the reference group to analyze the impact of information intervention on consumer preferences. |
