Effect of householder characteristics, production, sales and safety awareness on farmers’ choice of vegetable marketing channels in Beijing, China

Abstract

Purpose

Farmers’ selection of vegetable marketing channels directly affects their income and is important to stable vegetable supply and food control. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the farmers’ selection behavior of vegetable marketing channels, and to determine the key factors which affected farmer’ decision making.

Design/methodology/approach

A total of 191 valid questionnaires were collected from 50 villages in seven main vegetable production districts in Beijing urban areas from September to December 2015, yielding a response rate of 86.8 percent. The multinomial logit model was used for analysis in this study.

Findings

The results revealed that the farmers mainly selected farmers’ market, cooperative, and wholesaler to sell their vegetables, which comprised 96.57 percent of total vegetable sales. Estimation results showed that cooperative, vegetable acreage, price satisfaction, and slow sales were most important factors which influence positively the probability of opting to sell vegetables at a cooperative rather than at the farmer’s market. For wholesalers, gender of the household head and cooperative had most significantly negative effect, and age had a positive impact on farmer’s choice of market channels.

Originality/value

The results and implications obtained in the present study could help policymakers to establish a scientific-based and reasonable policy to encourage vegetable producers to participate in the circulation of vegetables in Beijing and guarantee their income in vegetable supply chain. The suggestions of this study could also be used for the improvement of the vegetable sector in other cities facing similar issues.

Citation

Zhang, B., Fu, Z., Wang, J., Tang, X., Zhao, Y. and Zhang, L. (2017), "Effect of householder characteristics, production, sales and safety awareness on farmers’ choice of vegetable marketing channels in Beijing, China", British Food Journal, Vol. 119 No. 6, pp. 1216-1231. https://doi.org/10.1108/BFJ-08-2016-0378