Research On The Effectiveness Of GI Certification Under The Collective Reputation

As China’s economy continues to develop, the living standard of residents gradually has improved significantly. And people’s needs for products perform diversified. Especially for agricultural products with regional characteristics, those are in great demand. But the driving from the interests makes some manufacturers fraudulent to abuse origin information, and fake geographical characteristics products are prevailing. The introduction of geographical indication certification system has effectively curbed the origin free-riding, promoting the development of the related industries.However, the introduction of geographical indication certification system is relatively late compared to other countries. So the role of the geographical indication certification did not fully play, with many problems. First, the level of certified products’quality is low. Second, high-end product is lacked in GI certification industry. These problems are mainly due to the presence of quality free-riding, and the manufacturers will reap short-term benefits by reducing quality. In addition, due to the development of geographical indications certification too quick, many certification standards set unreasonable. The two issues above seriously inhibit the effectiveness of geographical indications certification.By comprehensively analyzing the factors which influence the effectiveness of GI certification, this paper proposes solutions to enhance the effectiveness of geographical indications certification from the perspectives of individual reputation and certification standard. In this process, we give a deep analysis about the causes of GI certification’s collective reputation and the mechanism of impact to effectiveness of GI certification from collective reputation. Furthermore, this paper makes a study to the case of "Shanxi Apple" to verify the above theory. Finally, the paper also gives some recommendations to improve the effectiveness of GI certification.