Research On The Producers’ Behavior In The Building Of Traceability System Of Aquatic Products

In recent years, the health of China’s consumers has been seriously harmed by adverse incidents affecting the quality and safety of aquatic products. This has badly affected the sustainable development of aquatic product manufacturing enterprises and aroused widespread concern in the society. It is necessary to analyze the problems and causes of those quality and safety incidents involving aquatic products from an academic point of view, to put forward requisite countermeasures and apply research achievements into practice. By the investigation and survey of turbot aquaculture in China, and the image descriptions of the turbot aquaculture spreading path, using Arc GIS 10.0, the author has discovered that the industrial spreading of China’s turbot aquaculture is influenced by factors such as: natural resources; knowledge and technology innovation; understanding of economic benefits and market demand, as well as industrial policies and other related factors, that has promoted the healthy development of turbot aquaculture. At the same time there exist problems such as the lack of resources, low degrees of industrialization, extensive management, with deficient industrial policy support. Using theoretical evolutionary game theory to analyze the game relationships between governments and aquatic product manufacturing enterprises of their safeguarding the traceability system building of aquatic product quality and safety measures, the author discovered the following: the probability that governments and enterprises will choose cooperation strategies is mainly affected by the input cost of the traceability system building; the viability of raised earnings versus the risk of lost value after the building; the probability of food quality and safety incidents; the efforts and cost of penalties for illegal enterprises and the distribution coefficient of the profit and loss risk factors. In order to verify the reliability of the theoretical analysis results, the author uses logistic regression to analyze the degree of cognition that turbot farmers hold towards traceability systems and their desire to participate in system building. The author advances risk countermeasures and suggestions for the quality and safety of aquatic products. This paper consists of six chapters.Chapter 1: Introduction. This part mainly focuses on the background, content and methods of the research, and several related concepts such as the aquatic products involved, turbot, food safety, traceability systems etc. Based on this, the author presents the research issues and the significance and value of the research.Chapter 2, presents the literature review. This concerns a)a review of the literature concerning the current situation re traceability system building to safeguard the quality and safety of aquatic products, in which the main research directions of domestic and foreign scholars is presented. B) a review of the literature showing studies of consumer behaviors, government behaviors and producer behaviors regarding traceability system building. It especially emphasizes research into the motivation and willingness of producers to build traceability systems, based on costs and benefits. It presents previous research results, advancing a rational analysis supporting the proposed research topics covered by this paper.Chapter 3: The author analyzes the current situation concerning the spreading path of China’s turbot aquaculture and its quality and safety. By drawing an industry evolution path graph related to turbot aquaculture, the author summarizes the major ways and reasons for its rapid spreading, and analyzes the status of quality and safety in the process of its evolution and spreading. Root causes for the continuous emergence of quality and safety problems are analyzed and then a suggestion for building an aquatic product traceability system to ensure product quality and safety is advanced.Chapter 4: The author analyzes the behavior between the two main bodies, governments and enterprises in the building of traceability systems safeguarding the quality and safety of aquatic products using evolutionary game theory. According to the ‘information asymmetry’ theory of economics, lemon theory and evolutionary game theory, in assuming that governments and aquaculture enterprises are restricted to rationality, the author establishes an evolutionary game model between the governments and aquaculture enterprises, in order to help get evolutionary stabilization strategies by which governments and enterprises may opt to choose cooperative behaviors in the process of establishing aquatic product traceability systems, and theoretically summarizes the main influencing factors acting upon both parties in their choices..Chapter 5: An evidence analysis of the degree of cognition by aquaculture enterprises towards traceability systems and their willingness to participate in the building of traceability systems is presented. Via the analysis of evolutionary game theory in the fourth chapter, the influence factors related to the participation of enterprises in the building of traceability systems have been obtained. This chapter aims to verify the reliability of the theoretical analysis results. The methodology relates the reasonable design of questionnaires, using a question- and- answer format; the use of a field investigation with 164 farmers in the main turbot producing areas of China; the construction of a 0-1 logical regression model and multivariate ordinal logistic regression model. Using the statistical software SPSS 22.0, the author makes an evidence analysis of the most significant factors influencing the farmers cognition of the influencing factors for farmers to participate in traceability systems. It shows that input cost, risk aversion value, fines, expected revenue and other theoretical influences in the fourth chapter are the main factors influencing aquaculture farmers’ cognition degree and willingness to participate in the evidence analysis.Chapter 6: The research conclusions, countermeasures and suggestions are presented. The author makes main conclusions on the current situation of safety and quality of China’s aquatic products, traceability systems built by governments and enterprises, and the cognition and desire of enterprises to participate in traceability systems, and summarizes the difficulties and problems related to the process of China’s aquatic product traceability system building. It presents the conclusion that government should play a dominant role in strengthening the supervision of systems and strictly punishing illegal enterprises, whilst legitimate enterprise should consciously participate in the system building, reinforce internal management and technological innovation, enhance the capacity for sustainable development. At the same time, strength in marketing should be accelerated to enhance consumer choice and information, building understanding and acceptance of consuming traceable aquatic products. Finally, the author puts forward the direction of the future research.