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Abstract
The increasing share of imported food in developed countries, such as the US and European
Union countries, poses new challenges for food safety and quality regulators. China as the
world’s biggest food producer has the fastest growing share of fish and shellfish exports to these
countries. While there have been an increasing number of studies conducted on consumer
demand for various food product attributes, little research has been focused on producer
behavior, and studies on Chinese food producers are especially absent in the literature. The
objective of this study is to assess Chinese aquaculture producers’ willingness-to-change (WTC)
and adopt certain production practices related to food safety. Producer preferences for enhanced
food safety measures, and sustainable/eco-friendly production practices are assessed using a
choice experiment. Primary data was collected in the leading aquaculture producing provinces of
southern China. The average net income per farmer of our sample was 81,286 RMB/year of
which approximately 72% originated from their aquaculture operation. Derived WTC estimates
from a random parameters logit model suggest that the representative Chinese producer would
require a 2.49 % premium per jin of fish to adopt enhanced food safety practices such as those
required for China GAP, and No Public Harm voluntary certifications and they would accept a
3.22% discount before being indifferent between having an antibiotic-free facility and using
antibiotics. WTC estimates of sustainable eco-friendly practices and verification by various
entities were also assessed. A latent class model (LCM) is used to segregate producers into group
with similar underlying characteristics to develop policies to improve producer practices and
ultimately product safety and quality.