Research On The Effect Of Food Nutrition Labeling,Organic Labeling And Origin Labeling On Consumers' Willingness To Pay

With the development of agriculture and food industry,more diversified food can be chosen by consumers now.At the same time,consumers are also facing a crisis in diet health.On the one hand,the growing popularity of non-communicable chronic diseases(NCDs)related to an unhealthy diet,leads consumers to pay more attention to food nutrition and health;On the other hand,food safety accidents are a serious threat to the health and safety of consumers.Therefore,consumers based on the needs of healthy diet,pay more attention to the nutritional quality of food and safety quality,in the food purchase process.Food labeling,organic labeling,country of origin label and other food-related label information can provide effective guidance for consumers to make reasonable food choices,even affect consumer preferences and willingness to pay.Therefore,in the context of consumer nutrition and safety requirements of food,based on the food label on the consumer food purchase behavior of the guiding role,from a micro perspective,we took 613 domestic consumers as a sample,and chose milk as the object,investigated the impacts of nutrition labels,organic labels and foreign origin labels on consumer preferences and willingness to pay.Nutrition labels,focusing primarily on the enhancement of nutritional functions in milk,specifically included low-fat nutrition claims and high calcium nutrition claims,while organic labeling and foreign origin labels were more emphasis on the safety quality of milk.In this paper,we used Choice Experiment method to obtain the consumer willingness to pay for three types of food labels,and introduced the nutritional content,production mode,country of origin and price of milk in the research content.The empirical analysis was divided into two stages:First,based on the individual differences of consumer preference,the Random Parameter Logit model was used to study the influence degree of the four food labels on the willingness of consumers to pay,and the effect of variable interactions on consumer food preferences.Second,based on group differences in consumer preferences,we used the Latent Class Model to investigate the differences in the preferences and willingness to pay of different types of consumer groups,find the heterogeneity of consumer preferences.The main results were:First,overall,consumers were willing to pay the highest premium for milk organic labels,followed by country of origin labels,while high calcium claims and low fat claims had the lowest willingness to pay.The results showed that consumers were mainly concerned about the safety of milk quality.Therefore,in order to protect the domestic food safety and nutritional quality and revitalize consumer confidence,domestic food production should be from many aspects and sources to improve production and processing methods.Second,because different types of nutrition can provide different benefits for the human body,low-fat claims and high calcium claims had a complementary relationship.As reflected in the safety of quality,organic labels and foreign origin labels were considered overlap by the consumers,two types of labels exist substitute relationship.Organic and country of origin label was more inclined to reflect the advantages of safety quality,and nutrition claims was on behalf of the nutritional advantages of milk,so nutrition claims had complementary relationships with organic labels and foreign origin labels generally.But the relationship of high calcium claims and foreign origin labels were substitute.Third,based on the differences in consumer groups preferences,consumers can be divided into four types:foreign origin label preference type,organic and high calcium labels preference type,label panic type and label comprehensive preference type,and the socio-demographic characteristics associated with gender,age,income and body mass index have differences.Therefore,food producers should supply food with multiple attribute level labels according to differences in consumer preferences.This paper makes up for the shortcomings of domestic research on food nutrient labeling,enrich and refine the relevant research on consumer preference for food labels.It has certain reference value for the domestic food producers to optimize the production behavior,adjust the business strategy,and can help the government agencies to improve the management of food labels related to public policy.