Urban Chinese Consumers' Willingness to Pay for Pork with Certified Labels: A Discrete Choice Experiment

The paper aims to investigate Chinese consumers' willingness-to-pay (WTP) for pork characterized by four attributes, namely food safety certification labels, location-of-origin, "free from veterinary drug residues" label, and price, based on a choice experiment conducted among 844 consumers from Jiangsu and Anhui provinces, China. A Random Parameter Logit model was estimated to elicit consumers' WTP. The results showed that Jiangsu consumers' WTP for pork with a "Organic Food" certification (26.78 Yuan) was the highest among all attributes, followed by "Green Food" certification (20.22 Yuan), "free from veterinary drug residues" label (23.18 Yuan), and location-of-origin (12.77 Yuan). However, there was only a moderate preference for " Safe Food" certification (8.10 Yuan). In addition, respondents from the more developed region (i.e., Jiangsu) had significantly higher WTP for all attributes than respondents from Anhui, a less developed region. The Random Parameter Logit model shows that better educational attainment and higher income were two factors that were associated with a higher WTP. The main policy recommendations are that public awareness of the different types of verifications should be improved and that authorization of certification logos should be enforced strictly so that food with certification logos are always reflective of the standard being followed.