Chinese Consumer Quality Perception and Preference of Traditional Sustainable Rice Produced by the Integrated Rice–Fish System

Abstract

Historically, humans have created many sustainable practices, and among the most famous and successful sustainable practice is the rice-fish system in China. While previous studies have investigated eco-labeling food from various angles, consumer perception and preference of food produced from traditional sustainable practices (traditional sustainable food) remain unexplored. Taking the historical rice-fish system as an example, we examined consumers' perception and willingness to pay (WTP) for rice produced by a rice-fish system, by using data from 1422 consumers from China. Our paper shows that most Chinese consumers do understand the meaning of the rice-fish system and perceive the traditional sustainable system as environmentally friendly and producing high-quality food. The premium that consumers are willing to pay for rice from a rice-fish system is about 41%. Consumers who perceive the linkage between sustainable production and food quality and safety have a significantly higher WTP for traditional sustainable rice (p-value = 0.000). Interestingly, the perception of environment risk does not directly cause more traditional sustainable food consumption, but those who self-proclaimed as environmentalists are willing to pay a premium for traditional sustainable rice. Females, people with high family income, and people with children are more willing to pay for traditional sustainable rice. Understanding consumer perception and preference of traditional sustainable food provides critical information for Chinese policymakers to develop a cheap and efficient way to keep traditional sustainable practices and promote sustainable food consumption.

Consumer food stockpiling behavior and willingness to pay for food reserves in COVID-19

“…We firstly ask respondents to assume that the price for a package of fresh food reserves is 30 yuan before the outbreak of COVID-19, then requested the respondents to pick the maximum acceptable price for the same package of fresh food reserves during COVID-19. In this study, we hire the payment card (PC) approach which is prevalent in the current literature (Hackl and Pruckner 1999 ; Yu et al 2014 ; Wang and Gao 2017 ). Hence, we set the choices of prices in the payment card to include 7 intervals: 30–40 yuan, 40–50 yuan, 50–60 yuan, 60–70 yuan, 70–80 yuan, 80–90 yuan, 90 yuan or above.…”

“…The payment card method was used to measure consumers’ willingness to pay for a package of fresh food reserves, so the WTP from our survey consists of intervals and censoring observation. The interval regression is the main technique to tackle such a data structure (Yang et al 2012 ), and has been frequently used recently (Yu et al 2014 ; Wang and Gao 2017 ).…”

The Differential Effects of Physical Activity Calorie Equivalent Labeling on Consumer Preferences for Healthy and Unhealthy Food Products: Evidence from a Choice Experiment

“…We set a “attention check” in the questionnaire to identify the careless respondents [ 65 ]. The question was “Please choose ‘red’ from the following options.” If other colors were selected, the questionnaire would be identified as invalid.…”

“…We set a "attention check" in the questionnaire to identify the careless respondents [65]. The question was "Please choose 'red' from the following options."…”

US consumer reactions to China's Shuanghui acquisition of Smithfield Foods and its neural basis

“…Many studies have examined the effect of different food product attributes on consumers' preferences, such as location of production (e.g., Hu, Batte, Woods, & Ernst, ; Hu, Cox, Wright, & Harris, ; Hu, Qing, Batte, Woods, & Ernst, ; Lim and Hu, ), country of origin label (e.g., Lim, Hu, Maynard, & Goddard, ; Wang, H. H., Zhang, Ortega, & Olynk Widmar, ), food traceability (e.g., Jin, Zhang, & Xu , ; Wu, Wang, Zhu, Hu, & Wang, ), genetically modified traits (e.g., Hu & Chen, ; Hu et al, ; Hu, Adamowicz, & Veeman, ; Rousu, Huffman, Shogren, & Tegene, ), food safety (e.g., Bar & Zheng, ; Ortega, Wang, Wu, & Olynk, ; Wang et al, ; Zare, Nemati, & Zheng, ), organic labeling (e.g., Chen, Saghaian, & Zheng, ; Meas, Hu, Batte, Woods, & Ernst, ), and quality perception (e.g., Gao, Li, Bai, & Fu, ; Hu, Woods, Bastin, ; Hu et al, ; Jin, Li, & Li, ; Wang, E. & Gao, ; Zhou & Hu, ). A few studies have investigated how changes in companies' ownership affect consumer attitudes in purchasing food products (Jin, Zhang, Zhang, & Palma, ; Zhang, Palma, Jin, Yuan, ).…”