School of Business, Jiangnan University, Wuxi 214122, China.
Jiangsu Research Center of Food Safety, Jiangnan University, Wuxi 214122, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2018 Dec 6;15(12):2764. doi: 10.3390/ijerph15122764.
Frequent food safety incidents in recent years have greatly reduced consumers' trust, and consumers' demand for safe food has been on the rise. However, there is an inconsistency between the consumers' willingness and actual purchasing behaviors. Some consumers who have a willingness to purchase safe food ultimately do not produce actual purchasing behaviors, resulting in an "irrational behavior" in the safe food consumer market. In order to better study this phenomenon and identify its inherent logic, we chose to use pork (a typical representative of safety-certified agricultural products) as the object, based on a survey on 844 consumers in the Jiangsu Province and Anhui Province analyzed in July 2017 by RPL (Random Parameters Logit) and binary Logit regression methods from two aspects, i.e. consumer preference for different attributes of safety-certified products and factors affecting safe consumption. The research results show that consumers have a significant preference for pork that has additional attributes such as green food certification, organic food certification, origin information and "No Additives and Veterinary Drug Residue Labeling"; labeling such information on the pork can effectively improve consumers' trust. Consumers' inconsistency of purchase intention with purchasing behaviors of safety-certified pork is affected by many factors, such as gender, age, annual household income, the degree of trust in agricultural product quality and a safety certification mark, understanding of safety-certified pork, and the degree of concern on pork quality and safety issues. These factors have all contributed, to varying degrees, to the rising of "irrational behavior" of consumers' safe consumption, lead to an irrational state of consumption that consumers with a safely certified pork purchase will not necessarily buy a safety-certified pork. Based on the results of two empirical analyses, it can be concluded that pricing and age are the two main influencing factors that lead to the "irrational behavior" of consumers' safe consumption.
近年来，频繁发生的食品安全事件极大地降低了消费者的信任度，消费者对安全食品的需求也在不断上升。然而，消费者的意愿和实际购买行为之间存在不一致性。一些有购买安全食品意愿的消费者最终并没有产生实际的购买行为，导致安全食品消费市场出现“非理性行为”。为了更好地研究这一现象并找出其内在逻辑，我们选择以猪肉（安全认证农产品的典型代表）为研究对象，基于 2017 年 7 月对江苏省和安徽省 844 位消费者的调查数据，采用 RPL（随机参数 Logit）和二元 Logit 回归方法，从消费者对安全认证产品不同属性的偏好和影响安全消费的因素两个方面进行了分析。研究结果表明，消费者对具有绿色食品认证、有机食品认证、产地信息和“无添加物和兽药残留标签”等额外属性的猪肉有明显的偏好；在猪肉上标注这些信息可以有效提高消费者的信任度。消费者购买安全认证猪肉的购买意愿与购买行为的不一致性受到许多因素的影响，如性别、年龄、家庭年收入、对农产品质量和安全认证标志的信任度、对安全认证猪肉的了解程度以及对猪肉质量和安全问题的关注程度等。这些因素都在不同程度上导致了消费者安全消费的“非理性行为”，导致消费者虽然有购买安全认证猪肉的意愿，但不一定会购买安全认证猪肉。基于这两个实证分析的结果，可以得出结论，价格和年龄是导致消费者安全消费“非理性行为”的两个主要影响因素。
