College of Economics & Management, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China.
Hubei Rural Development Research Center, Wuhan 430070, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019 Oct 29;16(21):4182. doi: 10.3390/ijerph16214182.
Food safety incidents have aroused widespread public health concern, causing food price risk. However, the causal paths remain largely unexplored in previous literature. This paper sets out to identify the relations of local and spatial spillovers of food safety incidents and public health concerns to food price risk in consumer markets within a setting with heterogeneous food safety risk levels. : (i) Theoretically, unlike prior work, this paper decomposes food safety risks into food safety incidents (objective incident component) and public health concern (subjective concern component). This article develops a theoretical framework of causality to capture the underlying causal pathways motivated by the theories of limited attention and two-step flow of communication. (ii) Empirically, using avian influenza shocks in China's poultry markets as natural experiments, this paper differentiates between low- and high-risk food and incidents. The article adopts dynamic spatial panel models to analyze potential nonlinearity, moderation, and mediation in the spillover of food safety risk to food price risk for a long panel of 30 provinces covering the November 2007 to November 2017 period. (i) Food safety incident alone only triggers high-risk food price risk, not low-risk food price risk. (ii) Public health concern amplifies nonlinear food price risk triggered by food safety incident. (iii) High-risk incident intensifies negative pressure of public health concern on food price risk. (iv) Food safety incident indirectly affects high-risk food price risk through public health concern. Using a setting with heterogeneous risk levels, this paper documents that (i) food safety incident itself does not necessarily determine food price risk, whereas it is actually public health concern that directly causes nonlinear food price risk; (ii) public health concern spillover to food price risk is negatively moderated by high-risk incident, and (iii) food safety incident spillover to high-risk food price risk is mediated by public health concern. The findings complement current research by (i) elucidating the diverse impacts of food safety incident and public health concern on food price risk, which are obscure in previous literature, and (ii) highlighting that heterogeneous food and incident risk levels matter for determining food price risk spillover.
食品安全事件引起了广泛的公众健康关注，导致了食品价格风险。然而，在以前的文献中，这些因果关系在很大程度上仍未得到探索。本文旨在确定食品安全事件和公众健康关注在消费者市场中的本地和空间溢出与食品价格风险之间的关系，同时考虑到食品安全风险水平存在异质性的情况。
(i) 从理论上讲，与以往的工作不同，本文将食品安全风险分解为食品安全事件（客观事件组成部分）和公众健康关注（主观关注组成部分）。本文构建了一个因果关系理论框架，以捕捉由有限注意力和两步传播理论驱动的潜在因果关系。
(ii) 从实证上讲，本文利用中国家禽市场的禽流感冲击作为自然实验，将食品安全风险分为低风险和高风险食品和事件。本文采用动态空间面板模型，对 2007 年 11 月至 2017 年 11 月期间的 30 个省份的长面板进行分析，以研究食品安全风险向食品价格风险溢出的非线性、调节和中介效应。
(i) 食品安全事件本身仅引发高风险食品价格风险，而不会引发低风险食品价格风险。
(ii) 公众健康关注放大了食品安全事件引发的非线性食品价格风险。
(iii) 高风险事件加剧了公众健康关注对食品价格风险的负面压力。
(iv) 食品安全事件通过公众健康关注间接影响高风险食品价格风险。
本文利用具有异质性风险水平的设定，证明了以下几点：
(i) 食品安全事件本身不一定决定食品价格风险，而实际上是公众健康关注直接导致了非线性食品价格风险；
(ii) 公众健康关注对食品价格风险的溢出效应受到高风险事件的负向调节；
(iii) 食品安全事件对高风险食品价格风险的溢出效应是通过公众健康关注来介导的。
本文的研究结果补充了当前的研究，具体表现在：
(i) 阐明了食品安全事件和公众健康关注对食品价格风险的不同影响，这在以前的文献中是模糊的；
(ii) 强调了食品和事件风险水平的异质性对确定食品价格风险溢出的重要性。
