A Study On The Influencing Factors Of Consumers' Trust In Safety Certification

Most countries in the world gradually establish the system of food safety certification to reduce information asymmetry of the both sides of supply and demand so as to boost consumer trust and remit consumer food safety concern and as the important measures to improve food quality and safety. Since the China’s food safety issues has intensified, consumer demands for organic food are increasing in recent years. Food security crisis represented by “melamine incident” has weakened the Chinese consumer confidence in our domestic dairy products, and has also sparked“foreign milk powder” panic buying. In this context, the government promoting combined with market leading and pushing forward the organic certification system contribute to rebuild consumer trust in the domestic dairy products and has become the major policy instruments and market means to revive the domestic dairy market.Therefore, this article explored the consumer trust tendency of Chinese organic certification labels milk and its influencing factors and consumer trust tendency of Chinese and Europe brands or certifications organic milk and its influencing factors,on the basis of the current situation of the development of the domestic organic food market, we should draw lessons from successful experience of the development of the foreign organic food market, and accordingly put forward policy suggestions to enhance consumer trust and to promote the development of the domestic organic food market.Based on the research as the basic means, this paper took organic milk as an example and explored the influencing factors of the consumer trust in safety certification food. Firstly, this paper illustrated the consumers trust evaluation on and related attitude in milk labeled with Chinese organic certification label with different brands, and the trust influencing factors by Ordered Logistic Model. However, with the opening up of the Chinese mainland market, a lot of overseas certification organic food will enter China. In view of the certification diversification in domestic organic market, Secondly, This article based on sample data of 570 consumers in Shandong Province to study consumers trust in Chinese brand and European brand or Chinese certification and European certification, using Structural Equation Model(SEM)to analyze consumers trust formation mechanism and the differences of influencing factors.Firstly, based on the research of the domestic organic certification milk trustevaluation and influencing factors, the results indicated that consumer trust for different brands of organic milk were different, and were not high in general. Various factors, namely, age, education years, food safety awareness, evaluation of government regulation policy, evaluation of organic milk price, and purchase convenience, had a significant impact on consumer trust. Factors, such as income,environmental protection consciousness, and risk consciousness, were not significant.Further, the results of the marginal effect analysis on consumers characteristic variables impact on trust further verified that the consumers trust in organic milk was scarce. Secondly, based on the study of domestic and foreign organic milk trust evaluation and influencing factors, the results indicated that consumers’ own characteristics, perceived value, organic food knowledge and industry environment had significant positive effects on consumers trust, while the effects of food safety awareness were complex, this may be due to that when food safety awareness beyond a certain level, consumers are starting to doubt the authenticity and security of organic food, and food safety awareness will have negative impact on trust instead. And the effects of information exchange were also complex, this may be due to that there are many false certifications and speculative behaviors in domestic organic food market,in the objective situation consumers may collect more negative information about the organic food through information exchange, and consumers will have doubts and concerns on organic food and thus reduce the degree of trust. Consumers trusts in Chinese or European brands and Chinese or European certifications were different and their influencing factors were also different, which is a key driver of promoting constant growth and development of the Chinese organic food market. Therefore, in order to promote the public consume confidence and the sustainable and healthy development of the domestic organic food market, firstly, the enterprises should build information interaction platform to focus on promoting organic knowledge popularization and increasing consumers experience. The enterprises can be based on the actual situation of their own development, and carry out many kinds of management methods, such as certification cooperation or co-branding on product,and so on. The enterprises also should conduct the reasonable pricing and adopt the reasonable marketing strategy on organic food. Secondly, the government should further strengthen the supervision of organic food market, improve the relevant institutional arrangement and build effective certification system. The government should also take the right way to reasonably guide the public food safety awareness,likewise, promoting the information exchange also should adopt a reasonable way.Thirdly, consumers should improve their own food safety awareness and reasonably safeguard their own lawful rights and interests. Finally, develop corresponding strategies according to the differences of consumers trust level and influencing factors in Chinese and foreign brands or certifications.The main innovation of this paper is that, first of all, in the food market of information asymmetry, this paper systematically studied brand trust. Secondly, we further studied trust tendency and the difference of influencing factors organic milk labeled with Chinese organic certification label and Chinese and European brands or certifications.