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The purpose of this paper is to offer an overview of dietary transition patterns and a discussion of the food-related health issues in China.

The paper builds on a review of the existing literature on food consumption and diet changes in China, and highlights with specific attention to increasing food consumed away from home, the rising demand for fast and processed foods, and the popularizing of western-style foods in Chinese diets.

China’s food consumption patterns rapidly transitioned from one in which grains and vegetables dominated to one having more animal products and more diversification. More foods are consumed away from home and in the form of fast and processed. Income growth played and will continue to play a critical role in shifting the structure of food consumption. On the other hand, China is on a fast track from a lean population to one in which being overweight or obese. The associations between health outputs and food transitions, however, are inconclusive.

The main findings of this study have implications for better understanding the key trends and driving forces of China’s food demand system. Moreover, the results from this review are essential for food-related policymaking in many emerging economies where coexistence of undernutrition, deficiency of micronutrients and overweight and obesity is a common challenge to the society and individual households.

Continuing economic growth in emerging markets offers large market opportunities to producers and marketers worldwide; however, market failures due to asymmetric information are often seen when high-quality products enter these “new markets” where recognition rates among consumers are low. The use of “geographical origin” labels as quality signals to overcome asymmetric information problem plays an important role. The purpose of this paper is to compare consumers’ perception and willingness to pay (WTP) for different levels of geographic origin labels to provide insights to the strategic use of origin labels in emerging markets.

A consumer survey on geographic labeling for imported dairy products was carried out in Beijing, China in May 2015. Under the “products of European Union (EU)” range, the authors used “product of Ireland” as a case study for the country-specific origin label. Information on consumer demographic, dairy consumption, safety perceptions, knowledge on Ireland and Irish products, as well as WTP for different geographic labeling and product attributes were collected from 307 face-to-face interviews. WTP was elicited using double-bounded contingent valuation method, and estimated with maximum log-likelihood function.

The authors found that consumers are willing to pay premium prices for both of these geographical origin indicators, but the EU label had slightly higher WTP results. However, the controversial situation is that although the EU label has a better chance than the country-specific label in signaling premium quality to Chinese consumers, EU labeling at its best signals an average quality across the EU counties. For premium products with above average quality, using generic EU labeling has a potential drawback to the establishment of product differentiation.

This study is the first to evaluate Chinese consumers’ WTP for EU generic origin label for dairy products in comparison to country-specific origin label. Findings of the study have immediate policy and marketing implications in emerging markets.

The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of rising food prices on food demand and nutrient intake among rural–urban migrants and whether such impact varies across income classes.

Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), this study adopts a quadratic almost ideal demand system (QUAIDS) for food demand elasticity and an indirect estimation method for nutrient elasticity to investigate the effects of rising food prices on food demand and nutrient intake among rural–urban migrants.

The estimated results indicate that an increase in the price of pork alone would lead to a larger reduction in most nutrients among rural–urban migrants than other single targeted food group, and a simultaneous rise in the price of all food groups would have a remarkably adverse effect on the nutritional status of rural–urban migrants in comparison to the nutritional effects of a rise in one targeted food group. In addition, the nutritional effects of food prices across income classes show that the nutritional status is particularly vulnerable to rising food prices among low-income rural–urban migrants.

This paper focuses on analyzing the impact of rising food prices on the nutritional status of rural–urban migrants, a topic that is very limited in the literature. This study provides a fresh look at the effect of volatile food prices on food demand and nutrient intake among rural–urban migrants. The results indicate that income growth would have a remarkable positive effect on nutrient intake for rural–urban migrants, especially for low-income rural–urban migrants. However, an increment in nutrients due to a growth in income would not be far from enough to cover the reduction in nutrients as a result of a simultaneous rise in price of all the studied food categories at the same rate.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of providing information on Chinese consumers' attitudes toward and willingness to pay (WTP) for cultured meat, and to further focus on the heterogeneous effect of prior awareness.

The data were collected by interviewing 1,004 consumers through a face-to-face survey conducted in 2019. Repeated measures ANOVA, ordinary least squares and maximum likelihood estimation were employed for data analysis.

Whether consumers have heard of cultured meat before is not an important determinant for their attitude, but whether they know it well is. Consumers' attitudes and WTP all improved after the provision of information, but knowledgeable consumers' attitudes were less influenced by information than those without prior knowledge. Unlike attitude, prior awareness does not affect the effect of information on WTP.

Despite extensive studies on the impact of information on the acceptance of cultured meat, few have analyzed the heterogeneous effect of prior awareness. In the research on prior awareness of cultured meat, firstly, no consistent conclusions about the effect of prior awareness on attitude; secondly, previous studies only considered heterogeneous effects of prior awareness on attitude toward cultured meat, while ignored WTP. This paper provides new insights in these areas. Further, this paper provides the first evidence on the heterogeneous impact of prior awareness in developing countries; most previous research has focused on consumers in developed countries.

Following the standard practice of using nutrition claims to denote food functionality, this study empirically explores Chinese consumers’ willingness-to-pay for functional processed meat products by using three nutrition claims (namely “increased calcium,” “containing omega-3”, and “reduced salt”) made on pork sausages. It also aims to outline the typical characteristics of Chinese consumer segments based on preferences.

A choice-based choice experiment is utilized to investigate Chinese consumers’ valuation on attributes of interest regarding functional sausage products. First-hand data was collected in the two cities of Xi'an and Beijing.

There are market potentials for domestic and/or imported functional processed meat products among Chinese consumers. Nutrition claims made on pork sausages are appealing to Chinese consumers, and therefore, monetarily rewarded by them. Being imported from a more developed country of origin could both positively and negatively impact consumers’ WTP for nutrition claims made on pork sausages. Furthermore, specific functional modification strategies should be taken into account when addressing different segments of the Chinese market. In addition, regional impacts between Xi'an and Beijing are implied in terms of consumers’ valuation for functional pork sausages.

Limitations in the current study are mainly two folds. First, the WTP estimation magnitudes are subject to a hypothetical bias by using a stated preference approach. Second, this study only focuses on pork sausages to explore consumers’ perceptions and selects three nutrition claims among many other relevant options.

Implications are provided for meat marketers and for Chinese official food policymakers, such that promoting meat products with a nutrition claim is an attractive marketing strategy for foreign food manufacturers in China, and more reformulated meat products with better nutritional compositions should be allowed in the Chinese market.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this research is the first to fill in the literature blank on investigating the consumers’ valuation for functional meat in the emerging market of China. Because when taking Chinese consumers as a target market and evaluating their perceptions of food quality-related labeling and certifications, the existing literature is mainly limited to topics of product safety, organic/green products, and geographical origins. However, nutrition claims, as marketable credence attributes that associate closely to the main characteristics of the functional food products, have been explored to a much lesser extent among Chinese consumers.

Investigating the relationship between gender gap in school enrollment and the spread of information and communication technology (ICT) in rural China.

Using data from China Health and Nutrition Survey for the period of 1991-2009, we document gender patterns of school enrollments of children aged between 7 and 18 years. We estimate the impact of phone and internet access on school enrollments of children using a probit model.

The results indicate that the spread of phone and internet access both contribute to an increase in enrollment of females. Naturally, the gender gap in enrollments is not simply shaped by technology, and social norms also play an important role. Consequently, our results also show that enrollment of females is lower in the communities where pro-son preference is stronger, holding technology and other factors constant.

We conclude that promoting further development of telecommunications services may result in narrowing the school enrollment gender gap in rural China. This conclusion is valuable in setting governmental policies as well as guiding the actions of NGOs.

In the process of economic development and urbanization, it is important to capture the outgoing rural migrant workers’ food consumption characteristics for ensuring China’s future food security. The purpose of this paper is to empirically analyze the structural characteristics in food consumption demand of outgoing rural migrant workers.

The food consumption of rural migrant workers is estimated using a quaids approach by the GMM estimator to reveal the determinants of the food consumption of outgoing rural migrant workers in urban China based on a sample of 876 of outgoing rural migrant workers from the 2007-2009 household survey conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics of China.

The results show that the GMM estimator is consistent compared with the SUR estimator; the conditional expenditure elasticities of grain foods, livestock products, edible oils and vegetables by outgoing rural migrant workers are0.877, 1.081, 0.787 and 0.958, respectively; the unconditional expenditure elasticities of grain foods, livestock products, edible oils and vegetables are 0.634, 0.782, 0.569 and 0.693, respectively; the conditional Marshallian own-price elasticities of grain foods, livestock products, edible oils, and vegetables are -1.004, -1.019, -0.645 and -1.021, respectively.

First, the differences in food consuming patterns between rural residents and outgoing rural migrant workers should be emphasized in ensuring China’s food security for the policymakers. Second, how to ensure the supply for the increase in the consumption demand of livestock products in urban areas should be a major focus of China’s food security strategy.

876 households of outgoing rural migrant worker from the 2007-2009 household survey conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics of China are used; compared the GMM estimator with the SUR estimator in the estimate of the QUAIDS model; it sheds light on the structural characteristics in food consumption demand of outgoing rural migrant workers.

This study investigates consumers' willingness to pay for product attributes of domestically grown fruit and vegetable products.

Conjoint Analysis and Random Utility Model

Our empirical results show that the willingness to pay for attributes of products are different within groups with different education levels. For respondents who had higher education level, the priority concern for purchasing fruits and vegetables was safety. However, for respondents who had lower education level, the priority of concern was freshness. Regarding environmental awareness, consumers with higher education levels preferred the reduction of pollution more than ecological balance. For intellectual culture, consumers of higher education preferred cultural specialty packaging / labeling, more than described endemic life. Consumers with a lower education preferred endemic life presentation.

This research provides important information regarding consumers’ preference for different attributes of locally grown vegetables and fruits. Using this information, marketing strategies and policy measures to support the consumption of locally grown fruits and vegetables are implemented.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors influencing household food consumption away from home in Beijing by type of food facility and type of meal.

Derived from the Becker's household production and consumption theory, the authors econometrically specified household expenditure function on food away from home. Box‐Cox transformed double‐hurdle models were estimated. The data were collected in 2007 in Beijing China by the authors, using a diary‐based method designed specifically for this study.

Household income, time opportunity cost and other socio‐demographic and economic factors were found to be important determinants of household participation and expenditure decisions for dining out. However, the importance of these factors varied by type of food facility and type of meal. Meanwhile, the estimated elasticities with respect to income were correspondingly higher than those for developed countries, suggesting that the demand for food away from home by Chinese households is still in an upward trend.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to analyze Chinese household food consumption away from home by type of food facility and type of meal. Besides, this study uses an exclusive dataset collected from a seven‐day diary‐based survey. The data include more specific information on food away from home than the Urban Household Income and Expenditure (UHIE) survey data conducted by National Bureau of Statistics of China. The UHIE data were extensively used in previous studies on food consumption in China, but are believed to significantly underestimate food away from home consumption.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the income sensitivity of food consumption in Beijing, China, using an original household survey data set collected by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

An Engel curve model is fit to the household data of nine food categories and 35 food items, and both conditional and unconditional expenditure elasticities of demand are calculated and reported for the nine food groups and the 35 food items.

Working's model fits the data well, and the elasticity estimates are all reasonable in terms of economic theory, size and signs. The results indicate a relative large range in income sensitivity among the nine food groups and 35 food items in response to changes in household food expenditure levels.

The research analyzes unique and rich urban household survey data collected by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and is the most comprehensive analysis to date in terms of the number of food items studied for which expenditure elasticities are calculated. These elasticities may be used to study household food consumption patterns, to calculate caloric or nutrient elasticities, to study obesity in China, to study policy prescriptions in terms of taxes and subsidies on food, to infer welfare and affluence, and may be used as inputs into econometric models such as those used by the World Bank, IFPRI, and others.