Research On Consumers’ Traceability Of Apple’s Willineness To Pay Based On Preference Of Place Of Origin Attribute

Food quality and safety has become a major concern of human beings all over the world.With the rapid development of China’s economy,consumers’ requirements for food are also increasing.However,in recent years,there are frequent food safety problems in China.The root cause of food safety problems lies in the information asymmetry between food consumers and producers.Food traceability system can effectively make the relevant information in the process of food production and circulation transparent,trace back and recall problems from the source,improve the market failure caused by information asymmetry,so as to ensure food safety.Therefore,traceability system has become an important tool for food quality and safety risk management in most countries in the world.However,the current traceability system in China is not perfect,and producers do not understand consumers’ preferences and demands for safety attributes,which leads to single traceable food varieties in the current market and obvious structural imbalance.Therefore,to study which safety information attributes really affect consumer cognition and preference,and thus guide producer production,is the key to the current traceability system research.At the same time,there are frequent food safety incidents caused by environmental problems in producing areas in China,and consumers are paying more and more attention to information of food origin.Therefore,it is of great significance to study consumers’ preference and demand for origin attribute,adjust the supply structure of traceability food market,meet the needs of different consumer groups,and guide the construction and improvement of traceability system from the perspective of supply-side structural reform.Taking traceable apple as an example,this paper sets the attributes of traceable apple as four attributes: traceable information attribute,quality certification attribute,origin attribute and price attribute,and divides each attribute into four corresponding levels.Field survey was conducted on 481 consumers in different administrative regions of Zhengzhou to obtain survey data.The mixed Logit model was used to empirically analyze consumers’ preference and willingness to pay for apple’s traceable quality and safety information attributes,and cross-term was introduced into the model to analyze the complementarity and substitutability of each quality and safety attribute.The results show that: first,consumers have different preferences for traceability apple quality and safety attributes,and consumers prefer traceability information,followed by quality certification information,and finally place of origin information.Secondly,traceability information attribute and quality certification attribute are complementary,that is,if the two attributes appear in the food label at the same time,consumers’ preference for traceability apples can be enhanced.The attribute of traceability information and the attribute of origin replace each other,that is,there is overlap between them.Thirdly,consumers are willing to pay premium for all attributes of apple traceable,among which consumers have the highest willingness to pay for high-level traceable labels containing planting information,circulation information and sales information.The second is the mid-level traceability label containing planting and circulation information,and the third is the quality certification label,while consumers have the lowest willingness to pay for the origin attribute.The countermeasures and suggestions in this paper are as follows: First,encourage producers to produce apples with traceable attributes of multiple information,and enrich the traceable food market.Second,the government establishes an incentive system and guarantee system for traceable food production,and lowers the market price of traceable food by implementing targeted tax reduction and other policies.Third,the government should standardize the safety production system and strengthen supervision over apple production that can be traced.Fourth,gradually implement the origin policy to build trust between producers and consumers.