The Immediate Influence of a Food Safety Incident on Japanese Consumers’ Food Choice Decisions and Willingness to Pay for Safer Food

Abstract

ABSTRACT In January 2008, 10 people from three families living in Chiba and Hyogo Prefectures in Japan were found to be poisoned after eating frozen dumplings that had been imported from Tianjin, China. This incident had a big influence in the short term on Japanese consumers’ consumption choice of imported food from China as well as the willingness to pay (WTP) for food with higher safety guarantees. Using data from a Web-survey of 1500 respondents covering the whole of Japan, two regression models show that firstly, after the incident, consumers intending to buy Chinese food products reduced from 92.5% to 27.6%, and the change of purchase decision is mostly affected by consumers’ prior risk perception and attitude about Chinese products and presents a regional difference. Secondly, Japanese consumers are willing to pay 64,300 yen per year for safer food on average after the incident, and those whose purchase decision is influenced by the incident have a higher WTP of 54,000 yen than those who are not influenced. The most significant factor to decide the WTP is the framing of questions in the survey. The influence of demographic factors is less important and inconsistent in the two models.