Consumer Perceptions upon Food Safety and Demographic Determinants in China : Empirical Analysis based on a Survey of 512 Respondents

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With the fast development of science and technology in production and processing, food is being supplied with diversified taste, craft, nutrition, etc. Nevertheless, food safety is growing to be a global concern among consumers simultaneously, due to their asymmetric information on the processes, additives in the long industrial chain, and also influence of the flourishing public media. Consumers are demanding for the reinforced assurance of food safety, and even one isolated event may cause major market disruptions (Tonsor et al., 2009). In addition to the endeavors by governmental agencies and enterprises, food safety, especially from the perspective of promoting consumers’ confidence, has received considerable attention of scholars, including Knight et al. (2009), Jonge et al. (2010), Tonsor (2011), Lee et al. (2012), Yeung and Yee (2012), etc. Being the largest developing country, China has surpassed the US to become the world's largest food and grocery retail market by the end of 2011, according to the new research revealed by the international food and grocery expert IGD (Askew, 2012). At the same time, frequent outbreak of food safety scandals has undermined consumers’ confidence and resulted in huge losses to food industry. Thus scholars are imposed with the indispensible obligation to study consumer perceptions and determinants upon food safety. In latest years, especially after the melamine milk powder incident occurred in September of 2008 (for more details, refer to Qiao et al., 2012), many scholars have conducted empirical studies on food safety, on the basis of consumer survey. In general, the study topics include: (1) consumers’ overall perceptions on food safety. Wang et al. (2009) and Xu and Wu (2010) examine consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for the safe fishery products, certified & traceable food, respectively. Qiao et al. (2010) study the changes of consumers’ confidence on domestic dairy industry after melamine milk powder incident, while Zhang, X. et al. (2010) divide the sampled consumers into four groups, in respect to their perceptions and attitudes to GM food. (2) Consumers’ behaviors on choosing safe food. Zhang, C. et al. (2010) examine consumers’ identification of safe dairy products; Ortega et al. (2011) measure the heterogeneity in consumers’ preferences for selecting safe pork; Kim (2009) conducts factor analysis on consumers’ purchase of GM food. (3) Integrated study of perceptions and behaviors towards food safety. Han et al. (2012) compare the consistency of consumers’ stated and revealed preferences to certified pork. Although the existing studies have covered many essential aspects and provided instructive recommendations, there are still a variety of topics need to be researched with further depth. For instance, (1) consumers’ overall awareness towards the situation of food Consumer Perceptions upon Food Safety and Demographic Determinants in China: Empirical Analysis based on a Survey of 512 Respondents