Study On Quality Grading Of Agricultural Products From The Perspective Of Consumers

Quality grading of agricultural products is an important way to deliver the signal of product quality and to realize good quality and competitive price,as well as an inevitable tendency of promoting agricultural modernization.A current difficulty in the development of agriculture in China reveals two features.One is low benefits of agricultural quality or agricultural products with fair varieties but no good quality,and the other one is low competitiveness of agricultural products or agricultural industry being large while not strong.In order to improve the quality of agricultural development and realize the quality value of agricultural products,the 2018 Central No.1 Document raised the need of implementing the strategy of improving agricultural quality,focusing on the solutions for prominent problems in the agricultural marketing sales and strengthening the grading of agricultural products after production chain.By virtue of the quality grading of agricultural products,it could help gradually realize good quality and competitive price as well as dislocation competition,and could help improve the benefits of agricultural quality and the competitiveness of agricultural products.Due to the enormous size of Chinese population and the large income gap among social levels,the heterogeneity of consumers’ preferences is ubiquitous.Quality grading of agricultural products makes differentiated quality correspond to consumers’ preferences at different social levels,which provides an efficient way for consumers to make a right decision in choosing agricultural products matching with their consumption level,and produces favorable condition for improving of effectiveness and competitiveness of agricultural quality.However,the quality grading of agricultural products in China has not been well implemented in practice.On the one hand,the majority of agricultural products are not graded in sale according to national and industrial standards.The rest are mostly graded in the light of sensory attributes such as size and freshness which are easily judged intuitively,but rarely graded considering the quality attributes such as sweetness and brittleness which are not easily judged intuitively.As a result,such graded sales mode with low cost and simple operations did not smoothly deliver quality signals and did not produce sound implementation of the quality grading of agricultural products.On the other hand,although a few agricultural products such as rice has been graded in sale strictly according to national standards,only a small number of consumers refer to quality grading information in their purchasing decisions.The implementation of quality grading of agricultural products does not meet expectations in retail markets.The research regarding the quality grading of agricultural products is just starting to take off in China.Currently,the kind of relevant research still goes no further in the perceptual stage of cognition and lacks rigorous microeconomic analysis.Thus,from the perspective of consumer,the systematic and deep study of why the quality grading of agricultural products in China has not been effectively implemented is of great theoretical and practical significance.From the consumers’ point of view,whether consumers refer to the quality grades of agricultural products in their purchasing decisions is the market basis of whether graded agricultural products could realize their quality values.It is noteworthy that whether consumers refer to quality grades mainly depends on the level of cognition of quality grading system,on the degree of identification of quality grading attributes and on the degree of trust in the quality of graded agricultural products(Part 1).First of all,if consumers have a low level of cognition of quality grading system,such a problem can be improved by changing the labelling method of the information on quality grades or strengthening the propaganda.Secondly,the quality attributes satisfied by consumers are referred to as the basis for the quality grading of agricultural products.If consumers do not express their preferences for the current quality grading attributes,what kind of quality grading attributes do consumers prefer more(Part 2)?Thirdly,reasonable quality supervision is the system gurantee for the quality of graded agricultural products trusted by consumers.If consumers do not trust the quality of graded agricultural products,what kind of quality grading system guarantee should be established(Part 3)?Concentrating on these questions,this study,from the perspective of consumers,has carried out theoretical analysis and empirical investigation on why the quality of agricultural products in China has not been effectively graded.The main research contents and relevant conclusions are as follows:Part 1.Consumers’ cognition,identification and trust on quality grading of agricultural productsThis part aims to explore the factors hindering consumer referring to quality grades of of agricultural products,among of which three key factors,i.e.the level of cognition of quality grading system,the degree of identification of quality grading attributes and the degree of trust in the quality of graded agricultural products,are highly investigated.This study first collected the consumer data of formal and tracking survey carried out in nine cities,such as Nanjing city of Jiangsu province,Changsha city of Hunan province and Chongqing city.After that,the Ordered Logit Model was used to conduct empirical analysis of factors keeping consumers from referring to the rice quality grades.The results show that for a consumer,a lower level of cognition of grading system,a lower degree of identification of grading attributes and a lower degree of trust in the quality of graded agricultural products would result in a smaller degree of referring to quality grades in their purchasing decision.Therefore,the generally low level of cognition,and the low degree of identification and trust are the crucial reason for China failing to effectively implement quality grading of agricultural products.Part 2.Grading attributes of agricultural products identified by consumersThis part aims to elicit consumers’ preferences for quality grading attributes.This study first applied the Choice Experiment to collect the consumers’ preference information of nine cities in China,such as Nanjing city of Jiangsu province,Changsha city of Hunan province and Chongqing city.Secondly,the Random Parameter Model was used to quantitatively evaluate consumers’ preferences for apple quality attributes and the different levels of attributes.The results show that the consumers’ preferences for quality grading attributes and attribute levels are remarkably heterogeneous,and consumers care more about quality attributes,such as sweetness and brittleness,in comparison to sensory attributes,such as color and size.In other words,consumers hold higher degree of identification for quality attributes than sensory ones.Therefore,the currently applied grading attributes that quality grades of agricultural products are based on cannot fully characterize the heterogeneity in consumers’ preferences.Meanwhile,consumers’ needs and preferences for quality grading attributes having not been satisfied is an important reason for graded agricultural products not being widely accepted by the market.Part 3.Quality supervision of graded agricultural products trusted by consumersThis part aims to propose a quality supervision program for quality grading of agricultural products.Based on the cost-benefit principle,the random sampling probability inequality of the production enterprises counterfeiting quality grades was derived.The actual rice purchasing and sale data of a Carrefour supermarket was used to set the efforts of supervision,including the random sampling probability and regulation strength of penalties.Furthermore,the differences of regulation strength between China,the United States and that proposed in this study are explored,then the rationality of the proposed regulatory pattern was discussed and validated.The results show that in comparison to current Chinese and American regulatory patterns,especially the quality supervision of ordinary agricultural products with low prices,the punitive administrative penalty system proposed in this study demonstrates the comparative advantages over random sampling probability and regulation strength of penalties.According to the three parts of research contents and corresponding conclusions,the policy implication of this study exists in that,in the perspective of consumers,the effective implementation of the quality grading of agricultural products in practice relies on the gradual improvement for the level of cognition of grading system,the degree of identification of grading attributes and the degree of trust in the quality of graded agricultural products.The corresponding four policy suggestions are as follows.Firstly,for improving the level of cognition,to change the labelling method of the information on quality grades and to strengthen the publicity of quality grading information.Secondly,from improving the degree of identification,to adhere to the market priority principles and to regard the demand of broad mass as the starting point and footing point for the quality grading of agricultural products.Thirdly,for improving the degree of trust,to strengthen the governmental supervision on the quality of agricultural products and increase the penalties for the production enterprises counterfeiting quality grades.Lastly,to make full use of agricultural support funds and encourage agricultural enterprises and producers to participate in the quality grading of agricultural products.