Chinese consumers’ willingness-to-pay for safety label on tomato: evidence from choice experiments
Abstract
Purpose
Unlike some developed countries, Chinese food safety certification system is multi-level including organic/green/hazard-free certifications. The purpose of this paper is to assess consumers’ preferences for tomatoes carrying these different labels.
Design/methodology/approach
Data used in this study came from choice experiments (CEs) conducted in Shandong province, China. Based on experiment data, a random parameter logit model was established to analyze consumers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP).
Findings
Consumers’ WTP for organic tomatoes was higher than that for hazard-free and green-certified tomatoes. Furthermore, consumers’ WTP for the European Union (EU) organic label was higher than that for the Chinese organic label, whereas a non-significant difference existed between the levels of consumers’ WTP for hazard-free and green-certified tomatoes. Consumers with different food safety risk perception (FSRP) had large differences in WTP, whereas those with varying environmental awareness (ENAW) had similar levels of WTP.
Originality/value
This contribution is the first research which focuses on consumers’ WTP for EU organic label, Chinese organic label, green label, or hazard-free label on tomato through CEs in China. Furthermore, the influence of consumers’ FSRP and ENAW on their preference was analyzed through a random parameter logit model.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors thank the financial support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71203122 and 21407090), the National Social Science Foundation of China (14ZDA069), and the Young Scientists Award Fund of Shandong Province (BS2012CL019).
Citation
Yin, S., Chen, M., Xu, Y. and Chen, Y. (2017), "Chinese consumers’ willingness-to-pay for safety label on tomato: evidence from choice experiments", China Agricultural Economic Review, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 141-155. https://doi.org/10.1108/CAER-11-2015-0147
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited