Study On The Influence Of Blockchain Food Traceability System On Consumer’s Affective Brand Commitment And Willingness To Pay Premium

In recent years,food safety problems have emerged one after another.Especially in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic,there have been dozens of incidents in many places in China where imported foods are found to carry novel coronavirus,leading to a growing consumer demand for food traceability.Food traceability system is a powerful tool to realize food traceability and promote food safety.However,the existing food traceability systems have drawbacks,such as information being easily tampered with,information fragmentation,being difficult to clarify the subject of responsibility and so on,making them unable to guarantee food safety well.Blockchain technology,which has emerged in recent years,can overcome the above pain points with the advantages of decentralization,openness and transparency,immutability and traceability,and has been widely used and rapidly promoted in food traceability systems.The key to the successful implementation of blockchain food traceability system is that consumers pay for the rising price of food.In this regard,this paper constructs a research model of consumers’ willingness to pay premium for blockchain-traced food.Based on cue utilization theory,this paper analyzes how blockchain food traceability system affects consumers’ affective brand commitment and then their willingness to pay premium from three levels: technology,product and consumer perception.Among them,the factors at the technical level include information transparency and information immutability,the factors at the product level include product safety and product diagnosticity,and the factors at the consumer perception level include perceived trustworthiness and perceived informativeness.In addition,this study also explores the moderating role of health consciousness in the relationship between consumers’ affective brand commitment and willingness to pay premium.Structural equation modeling is employed to analyze and processe the data of 236 valid questionnaires collected from Jingdong Mall,and the conclusions are as follows:(1)Information transparency and product safety of blockchain food traceability system,consumers’ perceived trustworthiness and perceived informativeness of blockchain food traceability system have a significant positive impact on consumers’ affective brand commitment,while information immutability and product diagnosticity of blockchain food traceability system have no significant impact on consumers’ affective brand commitment;(2)Affective brand commitment can significantly enhance consumers’ willingness to pay premium;(3)Health consciousness has a significant positive moderating effect on the relationship between affective brand commitment and willingness to pay premium.After discussing the research conclusions in detail,this paper provides reasonable suggestions for food enterprises,and finally puts forward the research limitations and future research directions.This study not only enriches the theoretical research on blockchain food traceability system,consumers’ affective brand commitment,willingness to pay premium and health consciousness,but also provides important enlightenment for guiding food enterprises to implement blockchain food traceability system to enhance consumers’ emotional connection with their brand,obtain brand premium,and improve their brand competition advantage and economic benefits.