Behavioral patterns of consumers participating in food safety and social co-governance: consumption choices and environmental improvement

Abstract

Consumers are the most direct stakeholders of food safety, and their effective participation is the key to the social Co-governance of food safety. Based on the specific behaviors of Chinese consumers participating directly and indirectly in the social Co-governance of food safety, using the data of 350 consumers’ behavior survey and factor analysis and cluster analysis, this paper extracts two kinds of behavior models of Chinese consumers participating in the social Co-governance of food safety, namely, consumption choices model and environment improvement model. It is found that Chinese consumers are inclined to adopt the “environment improvement” model at this stage, which is the inevitable result of the current food safety pressure in China. The government should formulate corresponding policies to better guide consumers to participate in the social Co-governance of food safety.