Food safety concerns in urban China: Consumer preferences for pig process attributes

Abstract

This study examines Chinese urban consumers' preferences for pig process attributes related to food safety. A consumer survey was conducted on 479 participants randomly selected in the cities of Nanjing, Chengdu, Wuhan, Changchun, Beijing and Guangzhou. The field survey was restricted to two kinds of retailing: supermarkets and local markets. The questionnaire included a contingent experiment to evaluate five different attributes of pig production processes, including food safety effort, stocking density as proxies of animal welfare, meat taste, origin of breeds and quality. Through a panel mixed logit model we found that respondents were highly sensitive to food safety albeit with heterogeneous preferences. Such heterogeneity is partially explained by socio-demographic variables. Our study suggests that very poor families living in smaller cities are those most concerned about food safety in urban China.