Public-Public Collaboration for Food Safety Risk Management: Essence, Modes, and Identification of Key Influencing Factors Using DANP

Abstract

ObjectiveFood safety risk management is an important cross-boundary issue from both theoretical and practical standpoints. Because food safety has the social attributes of public goods, public-public collaboration can be considered a particularly important mode of cross-boundary governance. The study aims to provide a theoretical basis for the Chinese government to promote public-public collaboration for food safety risk management by identifying key factors.MethodsBased on a review of literature across diverse fields, such as political science, sociology, and new public governance, this study discusses the essence, modes, and dilemma of public-public collaboration for food safety risk management using practical explorations in various countries as the main thread and taking into account the actual situation in China. Moreover, this study quantitatively analyzes the relationships between the dimensions and factors affecting public-public collaboration and identifies key dimensions and factors using the Decision-making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory-based Analytic Network Process (DANP).ResultsAmong the 20 factors in the calculation results of DANP, Lawmaking has the highest value of (fi+ei) (7.022) and ranks sixth in terms of influence weight. The (fi+ei)value of Professionalism (6.993) ranks second and its influence weight ranks fourth. The (fi+ei) value of Administrative enforcement (6.722) ranks fifth, and its influence weight ranks seventh. The (fi+ei) value of Improvement of the social environment (6.699) ranks sixth, and its influence weight ranks fifth. The (fi+ei) value of Legal authorization (6.614) ranks seventh, and its influence weight ranks tenth. Data analysis indicated that these are the five key factors affecting the governance capacity in public-public collaboration for food safety risk management.ConclusionThe legal basis is the most important dimension affecting public-public collaboration. Legislation-based governance, administrative law enforcement–based governance, and social environment improvement–based governance in the behavior and capabilities dimension, professionalism in the basic characteristics dimension, and laws and regulations in the legal basis dimension are the five key factors.

Study on Key Factors Influencing Coordination Effectiveness of Food Safety Coordinating Body: Lessons from the Chinese Context

“…In addition, the supporting capability of the legal system in guaranteeing coordination (D 1 ) has a hybrid-weight value of 0.26528, which ranks second and is relatively close to the influence weight of D 2 , making D 1 another key dimension. This saliently shows the importance of the legal system and accords with the research conclusion obtained by Zhang et al [ 8 ]. The hybrid-weight values of D 3 and D 4 are 0.23521 and 0.22094, respectively, both of which are less than 0.25, taking the third and fourth places, respectively.…”

“…The market regulation agency is the leading agency, with irreplaceable discursive power, whereas agencies such as commerce, agriculture, rural affairs, and so on are in subordinate positions. Because the mastered resources as well as authorities and responsibilities are different among the various agencies in the food safety regulation system, these agencies also differ in terms of their enthusiasm and initiative for acting as a coordinating body [ 8 ].…”

“…However, in the NPM campaign, different government agencies advocate for the decentralization of power and form autonomous cultures on the basis of such power decentralization. This type of autonomous culture is sticky; once it is formed, it is typically hard to change rapidly with changes in the system environment and may generate path dependence, thereby having both real and potential adverse influences on the improvement in the coordination effectiveness [ 8 , 21 ].…”

“…Since the 1980s, for the purpose of improving the regulation effectiveness, the Chinese government has carried out eight rounds of reforms to the food safety regulation system; however, there are still more than 10 agencies undertaking different regulation functions at each of the four levels of government in the framework system, namely, from the central government to the county-level government [ 7 , 8 ]. The fragmentation of regulation by multiple government agencies is also regarded as one of the core causes of the relatively low effectiveness of the Chinese government’s regulation [ 8 , 9 ]. For this reason, the Chinese government established the Food Safety Commission of the State Council, which comprises 15 central government agencies and is led by three vice premiers of the State Council.…”

Identifying key mental health and improvement factors in hospital administrators working from home using a DEMATEL-based network analysis model

“…This method is also called DEMATEL-based ANP or DANP. This method has been applied to policy management ( 29 ), food safety risk management ( 30 ), and online shopping ( 24 ). The detailed calculation steps of this method are outlined in previous related research ( 31–33 ).…”