Consumers’ Willingness to Pay for Foods with Traceability Information: Ex-Ante Quality Assurance or Ex-Post Traceability?

Bo Hou, Linhai Wu, Xiujuan Chen, Dian Zhu, Ruiyao Ying and Fu-Sheng Tsai
Additional contact information
Bo Hou: School of Philosophy and Public Administration, Jiangsu Normal University, Xuzhou 221116, China
Linhai Wu: Food Safety Research Base of Jiangsu Province (School of Business), Jiangnan University, Synergetic Innovation Center of Food Safety and Nutrition, Wuxi 214122, China
Xiujuan Chen: Food Safety Research Base of Jiangsu Province (School of Business), Jiangnan University, Synergetic Innovation Center of Food Safety and Nutrition, Wuxi 214122, China
Dian Zhu: School of Dongwu Business, Soochow University, Suzhou 215021, China
Ruiyao Ying: College of Economic and Management, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 210095, China
Fu-Sheng Tsai: Department of Business Administration, Cheng Shiu University, Kaohsiung 83347, Taiwan

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 5, 1-14

Abstract: In this study, traceability in pork profile information with ex-ante quality assurance and ex-post traceability are constructed. Consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for traceability information is investigated in Wuxi, China, by combining the Multiple Price Lists method and the Becker–DeGroot–Marschak (BDM) experimental auction. The main factors affecting consumers’ WTP are also analyzed using a Tobit model. The results demonstrate that consumers have higher WTP for ex-ante quality assurance than for ex-post traceability. The highest WTP is for the ex-ante quality assurance attribute of pork quality inspection. Consumers’ WTP for traceability information is influenced by their individual characteristics, including age, education and income, as well as their concern and satisfaction about food safety and confidence in food safety labeling. The contribution of this paper is that it improves the meaning of traceable food information attributes and measures the significance of attributes to consumers. Furthermore, this paper introduces a Becker–DeGroot–Marschak experimental auction method which amends the measurement deviation of hypothetical experiments.

Keywords: willingness to pay; traceability in pork information; ex-ante quality assurance; ex-post traceability; Becker–DeGroot–Marschak experimental auction; multiple price list (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/5/1464/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/5/1464/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:5:p:1464-:d:212496

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().