TY - JOUR
T1 - Consumer preferences and welfare evaluation under current food inspection measures in China
T2 - Evidence from real experiment choice of rice labels
AU - Nie, Wenjing
AU - Abler, David
AU - Zhu, Liqun
AU - Li, Taiping
AU - Lin, Guanghua
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgments: Support for this research came from the University of Vermont's Food Systems Transdisciplinary Research Initiative and the National Science Foundation NSF-EPS 1101317.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 by the authors.
PY - 2018/11/1
Y1 - 2018/11/1
N2 - Frequent food quality and safety issues result in various food inspection measures in China, while some are not widely acknowledged by the public and are less efficient. Consumer demand is significant for priority setting in food policy. This study investigates Chinese consumers' heterogeneous preferences for selected food inspection measures and estimates welfare effects based on willingness-to-pay (WTP) calculation. Rice consumption data from a 2018 nationwide consumer survey designed using the real choice experiment is analyzed by the random parameters logit and the latent class model. The findings reveal that consumers place a high value on government certification, and brand is valuable especially when public management is perceived as weak. However, the insufficient market demand for third-party certification may increase transaction costs due to overlapping functions and consumers' distrust. Moreover, there should be a need to broaden consumers' understanding of traceability and grading systems. This study emphasizes the necessity of direct governmental involvement and the existence of unnecessary policy cost.
AB - Frequent food quality and safety issues result in various food inspection measures in China, while some are not widely acknowledged by the public and are less efficient. Consumer demand is significant for priority setting in food policy. This study investigates Chinese consumers' heterogeneous preferences for selected food inspection measures and estimates welfare effects based on willingness-to-pay (WTP) calculation. Rice consumption data from a 2018 nationwide consumer survey designed using the real choice experiment is analyzed by the random parameters logit and the latent class model. The findings reveal that consumers place a high value on government certification, and brand is valuable especially when public management is perceived as weak. However, the insufficient market demand for third-party certification may increase transaction costs due to overlapping functions and consumers' distrust. Moreover, there should be a need to broaden consumers' understanding of traceability and grading systems. This study emphasizes the necessity of direct governmental involvement and the existence of unnecessary policy cost.
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U2 - 10.3390/su10114003
DO - 10.3390/su10114003
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85055915989
VL - 10
JO - Sustainability (Switzerland)
JF - Sustainability (Switzerland)
SN - 2071-1050
IS - 11
M1 - 4003
ER -