Research On Consumption Preferences For Traceable Pork Integrating Animal Welfare And Origin Attributes

Pork and pork products are one of the most important meat consumer goods in the world.However,the poor pig feeding environment and the neglect of animal welfare protection have become one of the reasons for the frequent quality and safety problems of pork and pork products in China in recent years.The "severe exploitation and excessive use" of animals by human beings also is one of the important reasons for the occurrence of zoonoses worldwide.If the animal welfare attribute is added to the pork traceability system as the information attribute with the function of prior quality assurance,it will not only help to guide farmers to protect the pig welfare in the feeding process,prevent the occurrence of human and animal co-morbidities,swine fever epidemic and so on,but also play the role of quality assurance in advance.The food traceability system,which includes the complete function before and after,can eliminate the information asymmetry,prevent the occurrence of food safety problems and ensure food safety.The richer the information contained in the food traceability system,the further increase of the corresponding cost.If consumers have a higher willingness to pay for one or more food quality and safety attributes,the negative attitude of related producers in food supply chain due to high cost can be reversed.Therefore,in the construction of food traceability system,we must first study the consumer’s consumption preference for different food attributes.In this paper,based on the objective reality of the construction of pork safety and traceability system in china,constructs a pork traceability system composed of traceability information,animal welfare,origin,price and other attributes.Taking 305 consumers in wuxi city,jiangsu province as a case,using real-choice experimental methods,using tools such as random parameter Logit model,potential category model and SMRT market simulation to study consumers’ consumption preferences and willingness to pay for different attributes such as traceable pork traceability information,animal welfare,and origin,etc.The questionnaire data shows that although most consumers do not know the quality and safety attributes of pork in advance,after understanding the traceability information,animal welfare and origin,the vast majority of consumers agree that the implementation of food traceability system and protection of pig welfare can reduce the occurrence of food safety incidents to a certain extent.The results of data analysis show that consumers prefer the traceability information attribute,followed by the origin,animal welfare attribute;in the animal welfare attribute,consumers prefer the health animal welfare,followed by the physiological animal welfare and the environmental animal welfare,and consumers have a certain willingness to pay for different levels of each attribute.The study also confirmed that there is heterogeneity in the consumption preference of traceable pork attributes,according to which the consumer groups can be divided into four categories: quality and safety preference,price sensitivity,local property preference and low level traceability information preference.Market simulations show that diversified animal welfare levels increase the overall market share of traceable pork.According to the above conclusions,this paper provides some policy suggestions and references for the further construction of animal-derived food traceability market system,in order to contribute my own strength to the protection of food safety in China.