Revista Argentina de Clínica Psicológica 2020, Vol. XXIX, N°2, 374-380
DOI: 10.24205/03276716.2020.251 374
I
NFLUENCE OF
B
UYER
P
SYCHOLOGY ON THE
F
ORMULATION OF
F
OOD
S
AFETY
R
EGULATIONS
Jiaocai Lan
1*, Wei Zhu
2, Haiyan Zhao
3Abstract
Food safety is an important health issue for all humans. Strict regulations should be enacted and enforced to guarantee food safety. This paper attempts to evaluation the influence of buyer psychology on the formulation of food safety regulations. Therefore, the residents of Baoding, China were subjected to a questionnaire survey and interviews. The collected data were analyzed to determine the general buyer psychology concerning food safety, the influencing factors of this psychology, and how this psychology affects the formulation of food safety regulations. The results show that the buyers are very concerned about food safety, but lack relevant knowledge; the awareness of food safety is positively correlated with the education level and income; most buyers choose to buy branded food to avoid food safety issues; food safety labels have a great impact on buyer psychology of food; the food safety regulations should focus on three aspects, namely, consumer rights protection, food safety credit system and label management. The research results shed new light on the formulation of food safety regulations from the psychological perspective.
Key words: Buyer Psychology, Food Safety Regulations, Influencing Factors, Cross Analysis. Received: 07-02-19 | Accepted: 02-08-19
INTRODUCTION
The frequent occurrence of food safety accidents in recent years has aroused public attention to food safety. Food traceability and transparent consumption have become the main psychological demands of consumers for food safety, and all these need to be guaranteed by relevant laws and regulations.
Food safety is a major event that affects millions of households. Foreign countries started their research on food safety laws and regulations earlier, so their legal regulations are more complete. EU Basic Law on Food Safety Management and Its Research, Research on European and American Food Safety Systems, Study on Japanese Food Safety Laws, and
1History Department, Lingnan Normal Universiy, Zhanjiang
524048, China. 2School of Humanities, Tianjin Agricultural
University, Tianjin 300384, China. 3Personnel Department of
Yunnan Arts Universiy, Kunming 650500, China. E-Mail: lan10821828@sina.com
Compilation of International Codex Standards have studied the food safety laws and regulations in developed countries from different perspectives (Antle, 1996). Since the promulgation and implementation of food safety related regulations such as the Food Safety Law of 2009, and the Implementing Rules of the Food Safety Law in China, scholars from all walks of life have conducted research on food safety and related safeguard measures. Countermeasures and suggestions, or implementation rules for food safety safeguard measures have been proposed in Food Safety Laws, Food Safety and Risk Management, Research on Food Safety Laws and Regulations and other five works (Fischer & Frewer, 2008). By studying relevant references at home and abroad, it can be found that China's research on food safety laws and regulations mainly focuses on regulatory systems and risk management, and the studies on food safety are relatively micro, and few have analyzed the laws and regulations related to food safety from the perspective of consumers’ purchasing
JIAOCAI LAN,WEI ZHU,HAIYAN ZHAO 375
psychology (Rozin, 1996).
Based on the above analysis, on the basis of briefly introducing food safety and China’s food safety related laws and regulation, this article takes consumers in Baoding City as the research object, investigates and analyzes the factors affecting buyer psychology and food safety psychology, and puts forward countermeasures and suggestions on the formulation of food safety regulations based on buyer psychology by analyzing China’s existing food safety laws and regulations and their deficiencies.
OVERVIEW OF FOOD SAFETY AND RELATED LAWS AND REGULATIONS IN CHINA
Food safety
In 1974, the FAO put forward the term “Food Safety”. In China, food safety referred to grain security at first due to the limitations of her national conditions (Swigert, Farrell, & Yoels, 1976). Now, food safety in China means that the food is non-toxic and harmless, meets proper nutritional requirements, and does not cause any acute, subacute or chronic harm to human health. Speaking of food safety, not only the quality and quantity of food, but also the sustainable safety of food sources, must be guaranteed.
Food safety laws and regulations
(1) Current situation of food safety legislation The Food Safety Law of the People's Republic of China (Draft) was discussed and passed in principle on October 31, 2007. It established the food production and operation permit system, the food safety risk monitoring and evaluation system and other systems on food safety aspects from production, processing to sales, which improved the food safety supervision system (Pickrell & Loftus, 2002).
The legal system consisting of the Food Sanitation Law of the People's Republic of China and its supporting local regulations, departmental administrative regulations, and sanitary management measures has basically covered all aspects of food safety management (El Asam & Samara, 2016).
Problems in any part of the entire food supply chain will affect food quality, but currently there are no laws and regulations on food supply chains in China. However, related laws and regulations on the food distribution process, variety resources, food origin, etc. are relatively
comprehensive, such as Emission Standard for Pollutants in Livestock and Poultry Industry, Good Manufacturing Practices for Health Food, etc. (Grunert & Juhl, 1995). In addition, corresponding laws and regulations have been formulated on food safety standards, certification systems, and import and export (Dolen,Cremer, & Ruyter, 2012).
(2) Main problems in food safety legislation Although China's food safety laws and regulations have been continuously improved, there are still many problems and deficiencies: 1) The legal system is imperfect, which is embodied in the poor systematicness and coordination. For example, some regulations are just principled provisions which are hard to implement, lacking specific implementation rules and supporting rules and regulations. The legislative concepts are backward, and there are no basic laws on food safety. 2) The supervision system is defective: the current supervision system is not scientific enough, and there are overlaps or gaps in the regulatory links. 3) In the standard system, there are problems such as untimely revision of standards, poor timeliness, low standard technical content, many of standards lower than international standards, poor adaptability of incomplete standards, etc.
IMPACT OF BUYER PSYCHOLOGY ON THE FORMULATION OF FOOD SAFETY REGULATIONS
Survey analysis on buyer psychology
(1) General characteristics of consumers’ food
safety psychology
1) Generally high level of attention to food safety
Figure 1 shows the survey results of consumers’ attitudes towards food safety issues. It can be seen from the figure that only 3.5% of consumers are not too worried about food safety issues, and 86.1% of consumers are very worried or worried about food safety issues. And their concerns involve whether the food and the raw materials of food meet the national quality standards, and whether it is expired, etc. This shows that food safety issues have become one of the major concerns of consumers.
2) Knowledge of food safety needs to be further improved
Food is a kind of experience product. Consumers only know whether it is good or bad after buying and consuming it. However, for
INFLUENCE OF BUYER PSYCHOLOGY ON THE FORMULATION OF FOOD SAFETY REGULATIONS 376
many foods with food safety problems on the market today, people can not discern their quality just by eating them, because the additives in many foods cannot be discerned with naked eyes and by eating although they are harmful to health. These harmful substances are often latent and concealed, and consumers often need to know them through fast and accurate information transmission channels. According to the survey, although consumers show great concern about food safety, their knowledge on food safety is relative scarce, and the channel for them to obtain food safety knowledge is relatively single. Figure 1 shows the survey results of consumers’ awareness of different food safety labels. It can be seen from the figure that organic foods, pollution-free foods, and green foods have the highest recognition scores among food safety labels. It is worth noting that although the food market access system and QS certification are the same concept, the scores are not the same, which indicates that consumers have a biased understanding of food safety labels.
Figure 1
.
Consumer attitudes to food safety
issues
Figure 3 shows the channels for consumers to obtain food safety knowledge. It can be seen from the figure that the proportion of consumers who understand food safety knowledge through oral communication by neighbors or colleagues is the highest, and the proportion of consumers who get information from government food regulatory agencies and food experts is low, which indicates that the channels for disseminating food safety information need to be further improved.
3) Buying branded foods is the main way to avoid food safety problems
According to the results of consumer questionnaires and interviews, it can be found that about 80% of consumers prefer well-known brands when buying food, especially when they are selecting food such as dairy products, edible oil. In consumers’ mind, the concept “brand = safety” is widely accepted. The era of brand consumption of food has arrived. Figure 4 shows the cross classification statistics of consumers’ choice of brand, price and their food safety concerns when they buy food. From the figure, it can be seen that consumers who pay attention to food safety and branded food have relatively little consideration of prices.
Figure 2
.
Consumer awareness of different
food safety labels
0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5
Food market access system
HACCP
GMP
ISO9001 QS certification
Green food
Pollution-free food
Organic food
The average score
Figure 3
.
Access to consumer food safety
JIAOCAI LAN,WEI ZHU,HAIYAN ZHAO 377
(2) Influencing factors of consumers’ food
safety psychology
1) Education level and income level
Figure 5 shows the cross analysis of different levels of education and food safety attention. It can be seen from the figure that consumers with higher education levels will pay more attention to food safety. Consumers with a college degree and above attach obviously more importance to food safety than those with primary school and below education and junior high school education.
Figure 4
.
Consumers' choice of brand, price
and food safety concerns when purchasing
food
-10 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 Total Do not worry Not too worried General More worried Very worriedChoose well-known food Not paying attention to the brand Would rather pay more Unwilling to pay more
Figure 5.
Cross analysis of different
educational levels and food safety attention
0 10 20 30 40 50 Totally disregarded Don't pay much attention General Pay more attention Very concerned
Primary and below Junior high school
High school, technical secondary school College or undergraduate
Master degree and above
Figure 6 shows the cross analysis of different monthly income levels and food safety attention. It can be seen from the figure that with the
increase of the monthly income level, the consumers’ attention to food safety continues to increase. The proportion of consumers with a monthly income of above 5,000 yuan who attach much and great importance to food safety reaches 66.7%, while that of consumers with a monthly income of less than 1,000 yuan who attach much and great importance to food safety is only 40.5%, and those who do not pay much attention and pay no attention to food safety account for 44%. Moreover, from the survey, it is found that consumers with higher education levels and higher income levels have a higher level of willingness to pay high prices in order to be able to eat safe food.
Figure 6
.
Cross-analysis of different monthly
income levels and food safety analysis
0 10 20 30 40 50 Totally disregarded Don't pay much attention General Pay more attention Very concerned
Less than 1000 1000--2000 2000-3000 3000-4000 More than 5000
Figure 7.
Statistical results of the cross
classification of government food safety
work evaluation and overall food safety
evaluation
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 Total Very dissatisfied Not so satisfied General Quite satisfied Very satisfied Very unsafe General safety Very safeINFLUENCE OF BUYER PSYCHOLOGY ON THE FORMULATION OF FOOD SAFETY REGULATIONS 378
2) Evaluation of government food safety work Figure 7 shows the cross classification statistical results of government food safety work evaluation and overall food safety evaluation. It can be seen from the figure that the consumers’ psychological level of food safety increases with the increase in the satisfaction with government food safety work, which indicates that government food safety work has an important status in consumers’ minds.
Figure 8.
Daily average sales of the two
groups of products before being labeled
with "organic food”
0 2 4 6 8 10
Product 2 Product 1
Test group Control group
Figure 9.
Daily average sales of two groups
of products after product 1 being labeled
with "organic food"
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Product 2 Product 1
Test group Control group
3) Different food safety labels
In this article, two edible oils without the “organic food” label are selected as the study carriers. The two edible oils are similar in appearance, price, net content and brand. A
pre-test and post-pre-test comparison pre-test are conducted by keeping the original packaging (without the “organic food” label) in the pre-test, and artificially affixing the “organic food” label to the product 1 during the post-test. And the sales of the two groups of products are observed for a period of 30 days. Figure 8 shows the daily average sales of the two groups of products before being labeled with “organic food”, and Figure 9 shows the daily average sales of the two groups of products after product 1 being labeled with “organic food”. Through contrast calculation, the sales of product A after being labeled with “organic food” increases by 27.27%, indicating that the presence of a food safety label has a very important influence on consumers’ psychology of purchasing food.
Countermeasures and suggestions for the formulation of food safety regulations based on buyer psychology
(1) Legal design which gives full play to the role of consumers
Food is a kind of experience product. Many foods are found to have quality problems only after they are consumed by consumers. At present, most consumers take a negative attitude when encountering food safety problems. The main reason is that the compliant channels are poor and the process of complaints is slow and laborious. The five ways of protecting rights currently provided in the Consumer Protection Law are difficult for consumers to use. There are often strong language or physical conflicts during negotiation and reconciliation with business operators; requesting mediation or filing a complaint to the administrative department is often suspended due to insufficient strength; the arbitration cost is too high; the litigation is time-consuming and strenuous. Consumers often cannot contend against the merchants. Therefore, when formulating laws and regulations, an exclusive law for consumer rights protection should be designed from the perspective of food safety. In particular, with regard to food safety identification, the responsibilities, rights and obligations must be clearly defined, the cost for consumer rights protection shall be reduced, and relevant measures to protect consumer rights shall be introduced.
(2) Establishing a legal system to safeguard food safety
JIAOCAI LAN,WEI ZHU,HAIYAN ZHAO 379
The survey found that consumers tend to buy branded foods to avoid food safety issues, which shows the importance of credit. Therefore, a relevant food safety credit system should be established (Stavkova, Stejskal, & Toufarová, 2008). In addition to the production and operation files established for enterprises in various links of food production and sales, the regulatory credit files of enterprises must also be established, to regularly evaluate and disclose enterprise credit information, perform classified management according to enterprises’ credit ratings, publicize the untrustworthy enterprises to the society in a timely manner and take corresponding measures to order them to make rectifications, and cancel the business qualifications of serious violators. In addition, food labeling should be strictly controlled because the food labeling can be traced back to every link from production to processing and sales. Consumers usually judge the quality of food based on the labeling. Therefore, various links of food labeling should be kept under strict supervision, to prevent unlabeled and fake label foods from entering the market to endanger food safety.
CONCLUSION
Food safety issues are related to everyone's health and life safety. Food safety law is one of the important means to safeguard food safety. This article comes to the following conclusions based on the study on the impact of buyer psychology on the formulation of food safety regulations:
(1) Consumers pay a high degree of attention to food safety; and they attach more importance to food safety as their education and income levels increase; the consumers’ knowledge level on food safety needs to be further improved.
(2) Avoiding food safety issues by purchasing branded foods is a general feature of consumers’ food safety psychology; the presence of food safety labels has a very importance influence on consumers’ psychology of buying food; consumers’ food safety psychology is improved with their increased satisfaction to government’s food safety work.
(3) From three aspects: consumer rights protection, food safety credit system as well as label management, the countermeasures and suggestions for the formulation of food safety laws and regulations are proposed based on
buyer psychology.
Acknowledgements
Lingnan Normal University’s Personnel Project in 2016: A Study on Modern British and American Food and Drug Safety: Project Number; 1170917001. Major social science project of the municipal education commission in 2018: A Study on the industrialization of agriculture and the organization of farmers in the strategy of rural revitalization in Tianjin: Project Number: 2018JWZD20.
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