Measuring consumer' willingness to pay for food safety certification labels of packaged rice

Abstract

Food safety is vital for public health, influencing a country's economic development and international reputation. In recent years, Taiwan has encountered several food quality problems, with consequent public questioning and mistrust of food safety. If consumers are unaware of the quality of a product, their perception and demands can be influenced by the credibility of the food safety certification labels. This study uses the contingent valuation method (CVM) to analyze the factors influencing consumer willingness to pay (WTP) for food safety certification labels of packaged rice. Questionnaires are randomly adopted and assigned to 434 participants. The results indicate that product factors should be presented clearly on their packaging and advertisements. Consumers focus on certification labels for food safety perception. Gender, education level, place of purchase, certification cognition, and health cognition are all found to affect willingness to pay. These significant results indicate that women were more willing to pay than men; people were willing to pay a higher amount for purchases of packaged rice at supermarkets or hypermarkets; health cognition was estimated to be negative and significant, showing that health cognition negatively affected WTP, perhaps because participants did not sufficiently trust the foundation's assurance that the rice was safe. In the valuation of WTP for food safety certification, each person was willing to pay on average NT31.07 annually to reduce the risk of food safety problems.

Keywords

• food safety
• health cognition
• willingness to pay
• contingent valuation method
• certification label