Eating Out, Meat Demand And Food Consumption Pattern Change In China

From the early 1980s to the middle of 1990s, the economical status of China had been that the demand had been increasing faster than the supply, especially for the food supply and demand. With the twenty years?economy reform and the development of market economy, however, this status has been dramatically changed. The demand growth begins to lag behind supply. Consumption has been a hot issue of economy study since the market price, especially the food price, began to fall continually after the middle of 1990s. Food supply and demand of China has always attracted strong attention from both domestic and abroad. Predictions of food demand estimated by the relevant literatures in China are, however, quite different, ranging from 14-l6mmt to S5mmt in 2005. Moreover, the disparity between production and consumption of animal products estimated by the Chinese State Statistics Bureau (SSB) has been larger and larger since 1 990s, which has been given great attention by the economy experts on Chinese economy. Then what caused the big discrepancies among the predictions of food demand and between the production and consumption of animal products in China? One of the indispensable reasons is the ignorance of the consumption for food away-from-home (FAFH). In recent years, food consumption pattern of China has dramatically changed. Food consumption at home is slowly increasing or even stagnating, but FAFH is increasing fast with income growth and the rapid development of catering sector. So, what is the level of FAFH? What is the difference between the compositions of FAFH and food consumption at home? How does the FAFH affect the food demand? Studies on these questions will not only contribute to understand the trend of food demand but also to explain these gigantic differences. According to the Engle law, the ratio of food expenditure to total income will fall down with the income growth. The results of this study show that FAFH increases faster than the income, implying that the ratio of food consumption at home to total income will decrease a little bit rapidly. The rapid development of catering sector and the diet concept change of food consumption are irreversible as the income grows, the influences of which on the FAFH and even on the total food 4 epa ~ consumption will further demonstrate the role of FAFH in determining the magnitude and composition of the future food demand. FAFH has close relationship with food consumption at home, but it is quite different from the latter because it has its own inherent determinants. The FAFH study has been carried out very early abroad, but there is still no literature found on FAFH in China. First of all, by reviewing the literatures on the FAFH abroad, this study investigates the general trend of the FAFH in China, conducting quantity analysis basing the data of FAFH from SSB to study the influence of FAFH on the total food demand, concluding that the FAFH is the decisive factor for food demand. Secondly, this dissertation investigates the characters of the FAFH, individual consumer behavior of FAFH, and the determinants of the FAFH. And then, two-stage decision-making system models for both urban and rural residents are developed basing on the analysis above and estimated basing th...