| Ecological agriculture follows the concept of green and clean agricultural production,which is of great significance to human health,ecosystem and soil system maintenance.Eating ecological agricultural products is considered to be beneficial to protecting ecology,public health and the interests of future generations.In the past ten years,with the prominent environmental issues and food safety issues,the practice of ecological agriculture has aroused great interest.Meanwhile,the willingness of consumers to pay for ecological agricultural products with higher prices has been continuously strengthened,and the consumption of ecological agricultural products representing high quality,safety and environmental protection has gradually become a new trend.On the whole,however,the development of China’s ecological consumption market is insufficient,and the market share of ecological agricultural products and the share of consumer expenditure are relatively low.Existing studies generally believe that the information asymmetry in the ecological agricultural products market is an important reason that prevents consumers from buying ecological agricultural products.As ecological agricultural products are typical "trust products",the authenticity and purity of their ecological attributes are only known by the suppliers,but not easily recognized by the consumers.Under the condition of asymmetric information,the suppliers may commit fraud and opportunism,while rational consumers often choose not to trust out of the need of risk avoidance.This is the deep logic that leads to the failure of consumers’ willingness to pay and the slow growth of actual demand.Therefore,to promote the healthy development of the ecological agricultural product consumption market,the key lies in building an effective market information transmission mechanism and alleviating the problem of asymmetric market information.Based on the information asymmetry theory,consumer behavior theory,marketing theory,information transmission theory and other related theories,and based on the "premium","externality" and "trust goods" attributes of ecological agricultural products,this paper constructs a theoretical analysis framework of "information acquisition ability affects consumer behavior of ecological agricultural products" from the perspective of demand-side management,and uses the micro-investigation data of consumers in the national organic milk market,From the theoretical and empirical levels,this paper focuses on the impact of consumer information access ability on their consumption behavior,and examines the transmission mechanism and heterogeneity characteristics of consumer information access ability affecting their behavior.On this basis,further suggestions are put forward to improve consumers’ information access ability and promote the healthy development of ecological agricultural products market.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)The ability of consumers to obtain information has a significant positive impact on the willingness to pay for ecological agricultural products.With the rapid development of information technology and social networking platforms,product related information is "exploding",and the information delivery on the supply side is easily submerged in the whirlpool of massive information.To reduce the risk of decision-making,consumers can only search and process information more actively,then they can make more objective judgments and evaluations of products,and form a "consumption attitude" based on the existing information and generate subsequent behavioral interaction.Therefore,as consumers on the demand side,their active information acquisition is the key to the effective transmission of information,which determines the strength of the external stimulus variables(information)of consumer attitudes.Compared with the information transmission on the supply side,it is a more direct influence factor on consumer attitudes and willingness to purchase and pay.The empirical results show that in the ecological agricultural products market,the consumer’s information acquisition ability significantly positively affects their willingness to pay for ecological agricultural products.The stronger the consumer’s information acquisition ability,the more sufficient the information acquisition,and the stronger the willingness to pay.At the same time,since consumers’ cognition of ecological agricultural products is the prerequisite for generating willingness to buy and pay,and information acquisition is crucial to improving consumers’ cognitive level.Therefore,the impact of information access ability on consumers’ willingness to pay is largely realized by changing consumers’ cognitive level of ecological agricultural products,and consumer cognition plays an important intermediary role in this impact.(2)The ability of consumers to obtain information has an important impact on their purchasing behavior.On the one hand,information acquisition stimulates and induces consumers to form the so-called "demonstration effect",thus promoting consumers’ purchasing behavior of ecological agricultural products;On the other hand,information acquisition can help consumers to clarify their real preferences and needs,alleviate the negative emotions of consumers due to difficult choices(difficult choices),so as to help them make decisive decisions and take purchasing actions;In addition,information acquisition helps consumers to choose more convenient purchase channels for themselves,product brands with higher cost performance and product types that are more suitable for their tastes,and helps to improve the convenience,economy and satisfaction of purchase.The empirical results further show that in the ecological agricultural products market,the consumer’s information acquisition is significantly positively related to the purchase behavior of ecological agricultural products.The stronger the consumer’s information acquisition ability,the more sufficient the information acquisition,and the greater the purchase intensity.At the same time,information acquisition is an important way to alleviate the information asymmetry in the ecological agricultural product market and rebuild the trust of consumers.As a social "lubricant",trust enhancement can effectively promote the smooth completion of market transactions.Therefore,information acquisition not only has a direct impact on consumers’ purchasing behavior,but also has an indirect positive impact on consumers’ purchasing behavior by improving the level of consumer product trust.The empirical results show that consumer product trust plays a significant intermediary effect in the influence of information acquisition ability on their purchase behavior.(3)The ability of consumers to obtain information plays an important role in the post consumption satisfaction of consumers of ecological agricultural products.On the one hand,because the special attributes of ecological agricultural products,such as ecology,safety and health,have a certain degree of professionalism,consumers can continuously deepen their understanding of their relevant attributes through information acquisition,and thus recognize the difference between them and ordinary agricultural products,and can understand the possible benefits of consuming ecological agricultural products in terms of health,safety and ecological environment protection,So as to improve consumers’ value perception and consumer satisfaction on the whole;On the other hand,ecological agricultural products are trust products,whose specific attributes are not easy to be identified by consumers,and it is difficult for consumers to verify even after consuming the products.Therefore,the value perception obtained by consuming ecological agricultural products mainly comes from the trust in their "ecological" attributes.Under the condition of information asymmetry,the "information acquisition" of consumers provides analysis materials and decision-making basis for the rational cognitive system of consumers,which is conducive to improving the level of consumer trust and thus has a positive impact on consumer value perception.In addition,consumers can obtain sufficient information such as brands,channels,prices and other consumer comments,which is conducive to consumers’ leisurely choices.This sense of convenience and information symmetry can significantly improve consumers’ process satisfaction.The empirical results show that in the ecological agricultural product market,the information acquisition ability is significantly positively correlated with consumer satisfaction.The higher the information acquisition ability of consumers,the more sufficient the information acquisition,and the higher the post-consumption satisfaction..(4)The influence of information acquisition ability on consumers’ purchasing behavior has obvious heterogeneity..For consumers with higher education,because of their strong information processing ability,they are subject to less "cognitive constraints",and the positive impact of information acquisition on purchasing behavior is more obvious;For consumers with low education,limited cognitive ability limits the efficiency of information processing.Under the background of the rapid development of network technology and the information explosion,information acquisition may exceed the information processing ability of consumers.In this case,the increase of information can not bring about a positive effect,and even a negative impact of "information overload" on decision-making performance.At this time,The positive impact of information acquisition ability on their purchase behavior is not obvious..The possible innovations of this paper are reflected in the following aspects:(1)In terms of the analytical framework,the "premium","externality" and "trust goods" attributes of ecological agricultural products are extracted from the perspective of economics,and based on this,the analytical framework of consumer behavior is constructed,which is an extended study of consumer behavior and its decision logic from the perspective of information asymmetry theory.Firstly,the variable of "ecological cognitive level" of consumers is introduced,and the analytical framework of "Information acquisition ability-function induction-consumers’ willingness to pay" is constructed,which extends the theoretical explanation of "the mechanism of information affecting consumers’ willingness to pay" to a certain extent;At the same time,introducing "consumer product trust" as an intermediary variable,the analysis framework of "Information acquisition ability-risk perception weakening-purchasing behavior" is constructed,and the direct effect of information acquisition is explained from the perspective of "consumption demonstration effect" and "negative emotion mitigation effect",which is a further deepening of the existing research on "information transmission effect";Finally,the analytical framework of "information acquisition ability-value perception-consumer satisfaction" is constructed,and the logical path of information acquisition ability affecting consumer satisfaction is analyzed from the two dimensions of "cognitive level" and "trust",which is a useful supplement to the existing consumer behavior analysis(2)In terms of research perspective,the demand-side perspective is selected to analyze the impact of information acquisition capability on consumer behavior,providing a new perspective and new ideas for the study of "information transmission mechanism of ecological agricultural products market".The existing literature has conducted a more in-depth study on how to optimize the supply side information transmission strategy in the information transmission mechanism,and has formed a series of research results with important reference value.However,the importance of demand side information acquisition in the information transmission mechanism has been neglected,and the relevant literature is rare.However,in fact,information transmission is a process that can only be completed with the participation of both the supplier and the demander.The establishment of an effective information transmission mechanism requires not only the efforts of the supply side in information disclosure and transmission,but also the cooperation of the demand side in information collection and acquisition.In response to the needs of the era of demand-side management under the new development pattern,this paper attempts to carry out a systematic study on the logic of consumer behavior from the perspective of "consumer information acquisition",and analyzes the effect of the difference of consumer’s "information acquisition ability" on their behavior and its internal logic under the condition of information asymmetry,which is not only a useful supplement and expansion of the one-way thinking of the existing information transmission mechanism research,It also provides new ideas for optimizing the information transmission mechanism of ecological agricultural products market.(3)In terms of variable measurement,a new method is adopted to measure the key variables,which makes the empirical analysis conclusion more reliable.First of all,based on the relevant research results,this paper uses IRT model to measure the core explanatory variable of "consumer information acquisition capability",which not only avoids the logical disadvantage of directly using the "number of information acquisition channels" as the measurement index method,but also avoids the problem of imprecise weight assignment caused by the researchers’ prior value judgment in the weighted aggregate comprehensive index method.At the same time,based on the information asymmetry scenario in market transactions,a measurement method of "consumer product trust level" is designed.Compared with the "declarative" of previous trust variables,the trust measured in this paper is more "explicit",which also enriches the dimensions and perspectives of consumer trust research,and may expand the boundaries of related research fields. |
PDF Full Text Request