Risk Attitude, Contract Arrangements and Enforcement in Food Safety Governance: A China's Agri-Food Supply Chain Scenario

Investigating the factors affecting farmers' intention to adopt contract farming

Agricultural endeavors, especially in developing nations, entail inherent risks. Amidst challenges related to capital and agricultural marketing, contract farming emerges as a highly effective strategy. It not only facilitates capital accumulation but also ensures consistent product sales, establishes fair pricing, and contributes to the overall balanced development of the agricultural sector. This concern has been a longstanding global consideration, with Iran now addressing it. Recognizing the paramount importance of implementing contemporary agricultural methodologies, including contract farming, this research systematically investigates factors influencing farmers' intentions in Iran. A survey methodology is employed for systematic information collection from a statistical population of 98,777 farmers in rural Markazi Province, Iran. Using the Karjesi and Morgan table for sample size determination, a representative subset of 383 farmers is selected through stratified random sampling, ensuring proportional assignment within strata. A researcher-made questionnaire, validated by expert panels and confirmed for reliability through Cronbach's alpha coefficient, serves as the research instrument. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS 27, and structural equation modeling was performed with SmartPLS4. The findings reveal that trust (0.528), awareness (0.332), and attitude (0.168), exert the most substantial causal influence on farmers' intention to embrace contract farming. Consequently, the research findings offer practical recommendations for the adoption of contract farming, providing valuable insights to policymakers and stakeholders for implementing targeted interventions aimed at boosting farmers' willingness to participate in contractual agreements.

Safe Food Supply Chain as Health Network: An Evolutionary Game Analysis of Behavior Strategy for Quality Investment

There is a natural relation between human health and the quality of their food and drinks, and elevating the quality input level of food production for all enterprises within the food supply chain system forms the foundation for preventing various potential food safety risks that may be encountered. Unlike the previous research on quality investment of food production by enterprises, this paper probes into the evolutionary routes of the behavior strategy selection of subjects in the food supply chain and the preconditions for the equilibrium points of the social co-governance system. It takes the approach of establishing a tripartite evolutionary game model of food suppliers, food manufacturers and consumers on the basis of the social co-governance framework, in view of the above, this paper focuses on the influence of the reputation mechanism and the market contracts among supply chain subjects on the selection of a behavior strategy for quality investment by enterprises under the condition of lawful regulation by government. The results show that every subject selects their own behavior strategy on the basis of the balance of their respective interests. The net disbursement incurred by enterprises for quality investment and the costs of participation in governance by consumers constitute the dominant factors that influence both enterprises' selection of a behavior strategy and the level of social co-governance. Compared with the increase in economic punishment imposed on suppliers for production of risky food raw materials, it is more efficient to control food safety risks by lowering the costs of quality investment by suppliers. Accordingly, this paper proposes advice on policy in an attempt to provide inspiration for preventing and controlling food safety risks.

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

Objective

Food 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.

Methods

Based 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).

Results

Among 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.

Conclusion

The 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.

The stakeholder's roles in risk management related to food supply chain recalls: a systematic literature review

Purpose

Food supply chains (FSCs) are becoming increasingly complex and vulnerable to recall risks due to quality failures. Measures for supply chain risk management can minimize these recall risks. However, this responsibility must be shared by all stakeholders in the chain. This study aims to analyze the roles of different stakeholders in managing risks in the events of food recalls.

Design/methodology/approach

A systematic literature review was carried out, and 110 articles were explored to identify risk management actions and to link them to the role of stakeholders involved in FSC recall.

Findings

The study found that nine stakeholders were responsible for 25 hazard management actions related to food safety and traceability systems, regulatory and preventive measures, and control and response mechanisms for food recalls in the FSC.

Originality/value

This article contributes to the literature by proposing an explanatory map associating risk management actions to different stakeholders in food recall. The actions were grouped according to whether they were prevention actions to avoid a food recall or contention actions to limit the negative economic effects and maintain the health of the population.

Impact of COVID-19 Outbreak Risk Perception on Willingness to Consume Products from Restaurants: Mediation Effect of Risk Attitude

The COVID-19 outbreak caused huge losses for the catering industry. The outbreak’s influence on consumers’ risk perception and risk attitude was an important factor for these heavy losses. The aim of this study was to investigate the change in epidemic risk perception, risk attitude, and the consumers’ willingness to consume products from restaurants during the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic. The study collected 502 questionnaires at the end of 2021, and structural analysis was conducted using SPSS 26.0 and AMOS 20.0 statistical programs. The results showed that consumers’ awareness of the coronavirus pandemic (consumers’ epidemic risk perception) had a significant positive effect on their decision-making behavior under uncertain conditions (risk attitude); consumers’ decision-making behavior under uncertain conditions (risk attitude) had a significant negative effect on their willingness to purchase from restaurants; consumers’ awareness of the coronavirus pandemic (consumers’ epidemic risk perception) had a significant negative effect on their willingness to consume products from restaurants; and risk attitude played a mediating role in the influence of consumers’ epidemic risk perception on their willingness to consume products from restaurants. This study can provide guidance and reference for restaurants on how to deal with the epidemic situation, help them undertake risk prevention work and reduce losses, and promote the healthy and sustainable development of the restaurant.

Pricing and Safety Investment Decisions in Food Supply Chains with Government Subsidy

As the demand for safe food has been rapidly increasing these years, more and more stakeholders are dedicated to the safety of the food in the supply chain of this sector. To expand the market share of safe food, governments of some countries also provide subsidies to encourage food processors to invest in better food safety efforts. This paper establishes a three-stage game model between the government and a two-stage food supply chain that consists of one supplier and one processor, where the government subsidizes processors to invest in food safety efforts; furthermore, this paper determines the optimal wholesale price, marginal profit, food safety investment, and government subsidies. This paper analyzes the effects of the government subsidies and risk aversion of the food processor and introduces the mode of order quantity-based payment and demand-based payment; moreover, it also analyzes the impacts of subsidies and different payment methods on demands. The results show that suppliers can increase the market share of products by adopting the demand-based payment, but this method does not always benefit the members of the supply chain. As the processor is more risk-averse, the optimal subsidy is higher, encouraging the processor to invest in more efforts. Finally, the supplier’s profit increases with the processor’s risk aversion indicator.