Research On The Occurrence And Prevention Mechanism Of Edible Agro-Products Farmer’s Moral Hazard Behavior

Edible agro-products and people’s daily life is closely related to each other,its quality and safety directly affect people’s health and safety. With the rapid development of economy and the steady improvement of people’s living standards,people’s consumption concept is gradually upgrade, from basic need to enjoying life type, edible agro-products quality and safety also put forward higher requirements.Organic, green, pollution-free, natural, fresh and seasonal edible agro-products are become popular choice of people. However, affected by a variety of factors like agricultural ecological environment and agricultural production methods, unsafe edible agro-products still exists in China’s edible agro-products market,the low-end ineffective supply is difficult to meet the increasingly diverse needs of people. In 2016,the structural reform of supply-side have been advancing in many areas in our country,for the field of edible agro-products production, how to provide high-quality safety fresh nutrition edible agro-products and reduce ineffective low supply for the majority of people, as to achieve high output efficiency and products safety goals, is the focal point and direction of the structural reform of China’s agricultural supply side.Due to the quality information asymmetry of agro-products in the market between producers and consumers, producers and government, producers are vulnerable to profit motivated, excessive and illegal use of pesticides, hormones, preservatives and other agricultural chemicals and additives happened, lead to agro-products quality safety incidents occurred frequently, pose a threat to consumers’ physical mental health and even life safety. One cause of these problems arises from farmer’s moral hazard behavior motivated by profit. The occurrence of edible agro-products farmer’s moral hazard behavior,not only seriously affect China’s overall level of agro-products quality and safety, moreover, it has a negative impact on the profits of related participants of edible agro-products supply chain, which is also a threat to the production and effective supply of safe edible agro-products in China. To this end, how is the current situation of edible agro-products quality safety in China? How about the occurrence of edible agro-products farmer’s moral hazard behavior? What is the occurrence mechanism? What are the influence factors? How to effectively prevent it? This series of issues deserve further study. Therefore, this article takes "Research on occurrence and prevention mechanism of edible agro-products farmer’s moral hazard behavior" as title, on the basis of domestic and foreign research results, going to the fields to carry out household survey, investigating current situation of edible agro-products quality and safety in China, exploring the internal occurrence mechanism of edible agro-products farmer’s moral hazard behavior,on this basis,finding out the exact factors affecting farmer’s moral hazard behavior,and putting forward some countermeasures and suggestions to prevent farmer’s moral hazard behavior, which provides theoretical basis for the government to guide farmer’s production behavior safety and standardization.This paper takes farmer’s moral hazard behavior as the main line, on the basis of China’s current situation of edible agro-products,analysis the prominent problems and causes, and point out that the causes of agro-products quality safety problems during production processes is the occurrence of farmer’s moral hazard behavior,then the research is carried out focusing on three main issues of moral hazard behavior, that is,"what is moral hazard? What are the possible influencing factors? How to effectively prevent it?". Then, on the basis of the current situation of farmer’ s moral hazard, this study analyzes the causes of farmer’s moral hazard from various angles, with the help of "Becker-Stiegler" model,this study try to find the factors influence farmer’s moral hazard behavior from theory perspective. With the help of principal-agent theory, this paper establishes the theoretical model, and puts forward research hypothesis, designs questionnaire, carries out household survey, then binary logistic regression model and semi-parametric logistic regression model were taken to find out the main factors that significantly affected farmer’s moral hazard behavior from empirical analysis perspective. Finally, this study points out the policy priority of prevention farmer’s moral hazard behavior from economic, social, institution and law perspectives, and proposes specific prevention measures from farmer, government and agricultural cooperation organization’s aspects. This paper is composed with eight chapters.Based on the field investigation, research is carried out according to the thoughts of farmer’s moral hazard behavior occurrence mechanism, influence factors and prevention mechanism, and with the help of normative and empirical analysis, this paper get the following conclusions:First,China’s current edible agro-products quality safety situation is stable and getting better, however, because of the problems happened in the production process,edible agro-products quality safety events also occur frequently. The problems in the production process are as follows: farmer’s moral hazard behavior driven by interests,the deterioration of the ecological environment and the excessive use of chemical inputs.Second,through the systematic analysis of farmer’s moral hazard behavior, this paper believed that the occurrence of farmer’s moral hazard behavior is affected both by internal and external causes, the internal factors including farmer’s pursuit of short-term profits maximization, opportunism, limited rationality and farmer’s weak sense of self-discipline, while the external factors including the disadvantages and deficiencies of market mechanism, government supervision, social development,agricultural cooperation organization and institution design, which manifests as the market failure of edible agro-products, the limitations of government regulation, the increase opportunity cost of agricultural production, the low degree of organization and farmer’s production behavior credit system has not yet been established etc..Third, the empirical analysis results indicate that the following six variables have negative significantly effect on farmer’s moral hazard behavior,respectively"proportion of non-agricultural income","quality concern on edible agro-products","whether attain ’san pin yi biao’ certification or not","whether value personal reputation or credit or not ","whether sign purchase and sales contracts or not" and"implementation of input control system",among them,"quality concern on edible agro-products" is the most important factor affecting farmer ’s moral hazard behavior.Fourth, the results also show that the informal institution spontaneously exists in the vast rural areas, such as "moral values constraint" and "whether develop village rules or not" also have a significant effect on farmer’s moral hazard, the empirical results show that the "moral values constraint" and "whether develop village rules or not" variable negative significant influence farmer’s moral hazard behavior.Fifth, in order to effectively prevent edible agro-products farmer’s moral hazard behavior from the source, this paper point out the policy focus from economy, society,institution and law perspectives, and put forward specific policy measures from farmers themselves, the government and the agricultural cooperation organization.From the economic perspective,it should effectively increase farmer’s grow income,enhance consumer’s purchasing power on safety edible agro-products, and improve the circulation efficiency of edible agro-products. From the society perspective, farmers should raise the awareness of social responsibility and enhance the level of moral mastery; rural collective organizations should develop and improve village regulation,and play the role of village regulation, protect the excellent traditional culture; for the government, it is necessary to strictly enforce the law, then improve farmer’s education level, and make incentive measures. From the institution perspective, it should give full play to the role of heteronomy mechanism, and through the institution innovation to guide farmer self-discipline. From the law perspective, it should constantly improve the law awareness of farmers and consumers,and make the "People’s Republic of China edible agro-products quality and safety law". Farmers should improve their quality and safety awareness and cultivate their sense of self-discipline. The government should establish farmer’s production behavior credit system as soon as possible, so as to guide farmers consciously regulate production beahvior,meanwhile,strictly control the agricultural inputs and improve the incentive and restraint mechanisms. Agricultural cooperative organizations should play a good role in servicing members (farmers),make a good big "economic cake" and reasonably distribute it.