Abstract
This article addresses the sustainable traceability issue in the food supply chain from the sourcing perspective in which consumer willingness to pay for traceability is considered. There are two supplier types: traceable suppliers, which are costly but can carry a precise recall in food safety events, and non-traceable suppliers, which are less expensive but may suffer a higher cost in food safety events. A portion of consumers display traceability consciousness, and are willing to pay a premium for traceable food products. Four possible strategies in a transparent food supply chain and three sourcing strategies in a nontransparent food supply chain are identified and we determine when each strategy is optimal. We show that efforts to improve traceability that focus on consumers, by increasing their willingness to pay for traceability or expanding the portion of traceability consciousness consumers, may lead to an unintended consequence, such as a decrease in the provision of traceable food products. However, efforts that focus on revealing and penalizing the buyer always lead to a higher provision of traceable food products. We further find that efforts focusing on eliminating the information asymmetry may not be helpful for sustainable traceability in the food supply chain.
Highlights
In the food industry, many aspects of social sustainability, such as consumer health and safety, have gained considerable attention due to frequent food safety events [1]
The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported 122 food recalls in 2016, and 58,140,787 pounds of food was removed from the circulation [7]
We focus on the first function, which reduces the private and public sector costs of food safety events by tracing food back to the source of the contamination problem and tracing other potentially tainted ones forward through the supply chain
Summary
Many aspects of social sustainability, such as consumer health and safety, have gained considerable attention due to frequent food safety events [1]. We focus on the first function, which reduces the private and public sector costs of food safety events by tracing food back to the source of the contamination problem and tracing other potentially tainted ones forward through the supply chain. When a food safety event occurs, the buyer sourced from the supplier with low-level traceability should recall more food products and suffer more cost. Sustainability 2017, 9, 999 can be associated with its marketing strategy [27], as selecting a traceable supplier can reduce its costs, whilst allowing the firm to extract additional profit from the traceability consciousness segment Within this context, this article intends to provide a thorough investigation of three key questions.
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