Research On The Citizens’ Willingness And Factors Influencing Public Participation In The Csa

In the process of urbanization, citizens in our country had to buy food all from supermarkets and food markets, however, farmers had to sell their products through these intermediaries. These intermediaries bought products from farmers and transfer them to the citizens, and divided all the costs in the process into farmers and citizens. The existence of CSA solved the problem that intermediaries seized most value of the products. CSA is a corporate association of farms or farm group and the community they supported, citizens and farmers sharing the risks and benefits of food production. Citizens are the consumers of the farms or members of them, and they have reached some agreements. Consumers promise to pay the predetermined amount when the products are growing, usually once a month or once a season, sometimes once a year. And the farms provide some fresh agricultural products every week in return. CSA tries to establish a direct link between the farms and their consumers. The most important target of CSA is satisfy citizen’s food consume and protect the development of small farms.This article is based on the rational choice theory, consumer demand theory, theory of planned behavior, taking the citizens of Nanjing as an example, analyze the willingness and factors influencing public participation in CSA from empirical aspects, use qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis (Logistic Model), Questionnaire survey combined with case analysis, use a sample of336effective questionnaires done by Nanjing citizens whom were informed of CSA in April2012, finally get conclusion about the willingness of public participation in CSA. There are several points about this article:first, it analyse the factors influencing public participation in CSA based on the consumer behavior theory, including personal characteristics, environmental characteristics, personal behavioral characteristics, and then build a theoretical model. Next, I conduct a descriptive statistical analysis on the data about consumers’personal characteristics, environmental characteristics, and the recognition of CSA and the willingness to join in CSA. Afterwards, I use Logistic model to give quantitative analysis to the factors influencing willingness of public participation in CSA and finally I give conclusion about this research and give relative advice.This research has several conclusions based on research and analysis:Based on the investigation on the statistics and analysis of Nanjing sample, the overall participation rate in CSA of Nanjing citizen is high; female, married people, high education level, high family income, high care of health and identity of national certification safety identification of CSA are relatively more willing to participate in CSA, so these factors have positive effects on the willingness to participate in CSA.The Logistic model empirical analysis state that, gender, level of education, possession of private cars, understanding of CSA, occupation, family income and trust on public safety identification of agricultural products are significant factors influencing public participation in the CSA agriculture, among them, the public family monthly income per person, and trust on public safety identification of agricultural products are the most significant factors; however, the other factors such as age, marital status, family population, care of health, frequency of participating in the community activities have no significant effect on the willingness to join CSA. According to the conclusions above, this paper finally put forward to some suggestions to improve public participation in CSA.