Analysis Of The Influencing Factors Of Rural Mom-and-Pop Storekeepers’ Behavior In Controlling Food Quality And Safety In The Undeveloped Area

In recent years, food safety issue becomes more and more important and always attracts people’s attention. Although the government implements various policies to solve the food quality and safety problem, a variety of food safety incidents still occurred frequently, especially in the rural areas. Due to the backwardness of rural food operators’management style, the low development of supermarket and the supervisors’neglect of rural food security, so many fake and shoddy products are transported from the city to the rural areas. The rural became the worst-hit areas of food quality and safety. According to statistics from the Ministry of health, food safety incidents occurs mostly in remote rural areas. Food safety issues occurred frequently in rural areas exposed that rural food safety regulatory system needs to be improved. Circulation is an important link in the food supply chain, especially the retail link, it’s an important bridge between producers and consumers, so the supervision and management of circulation cannot be ignored.Domestic and international practice shows that, chain-store operations, as a modern form of circulation organization, has important significance in improving agricultural products, food safety and circulation efficiency. However, because of the restriction of China’s urban-rural dual structure, the development of rural retail industry in China is slow, and the low barrier to entry makes the individual business developed rapidly. The "mom-and-pop store" became the main places for rural residents, especially the undeveloped area, to buy food. Because of its low degree of organization, the poor conditions, backward style of operation, there are many problems in the food safety and quality control as well as to the development of supermarket business mode. Therefore, basing on the previous research, this paper focused on rural mom-and-pop store keeper’s attitude and behavior control of food quality and safety, and through the case study from the East and West, discussed on how to improve the rural mom-and-pop store’s level of controlling food quality and safety in undeveloped areas. This paper’s main conclusion is:(1) The main causes of the food quality and safety problems of mom-and-pop stores in rural retail link is rural residents’ lack of safety awareness, the low quality of rural food operators and the lack of supervision, etc.(2) Based on Theory of Planned Behavior, this paper built a framework of mom-and-pop stores’ control behavior of food quality and safety. Using Binary Logistic model, this paper finds that the behavior objectives, the control of cognitive-behavior, the pressure of consumer, the supervision of government, the age of the operator, the educated level and the scale of mom-and-pop stores have significant impact on the control behavior of mom-and-pop stores.(3) By comparing the chain stores and mom-and-pop stores of the west and the east, this paper find there is a gap between rural mom-and-pop stores in undeveloped areas and the perfect quality and safety control mode--chain operation mode. Considering all the factors, the less developed area should be carried out step by step to transform the mom-and-pop stores, firstly, we should improve the supervision and regulation of them when there still exists a lot of difficulties, and then to develop the chain operation mode when conditions are ripe.In the end, after the analysis and discussion, this dissertation proposes some reasonable policy suggestions in order to solve the rural retail sectors of food quality and safety problems, improve the food circulation system in rural areas, safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of farmers.