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The purpose of this paper with pork as a case is to analyze Chinese consumer preference and demand for traceable food attributes, in order to provide a useful reference for Chinese Government in developing the safe food market and preventing food safety risks.

This research surveyed 1,380 consumers in seven pilot cities that designated by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce for the construction of a meat and vegetable circulation traceability system. A choice-based conjoint analysis and multinomial logit model were used to study consumer preferences and demand for traceable pork attributes.

The results demonstrated that certification of traceable information was the most important characteristic, followed by appearance and traceable information. Significant heterogeneity was obtained in consumer preferences for the attributes of traceable pork. Also, consumers’ preferences for traceable attributes were memorably influenced by age, education level, and income level.

Based on these results, the government should encourage and support the production of traceable food with different certification types and different traceability levels. Meanwhile, the development of food traceability systems should be combined with a quality certification labeling system.

This study extends the applicability of the setting of traceable food attributes and levels in China, and it will improve Chinese food traceability systems through multilateral cooperation.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the factors that influence food safety reporting intention and behaviour of the public.

Data used in this study came from a questionnaire survey conducted in Shandong Province, China. The 642 qualified samples were analysed through structural equation model based on the expanded theory of planned behaviour to study public food safety reporting behaviour and its influencing factors.

Results indicated that participation attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control (PBC) and moral norm had significantly positive effects on public reporting intention, which had a direct effect on behaviour. Among subjective norm, descriptive norm had a more significant influence on the intention to report than injunctive norm. PBC indirectly affected reporting behaviour through participation intention, and directly affected participation behaviour. Socio-demographic variables had significant influence on participation attitude, injunctive norm and PBC, whereas these variables had no influence on descriptive norm and moral norm.

This research is of academic value and of value to policy makers. To promote public participation in food safety reporting, the government should consider influencing factors of food safety reporting.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the responsibility that should be taken by different pork supply chain participants to ensure pork quality and safety, with the aim of providing some guidance for strengthening the supervision of pork quality and safety.

The pig farmer survey and the pork consumer survey were conducted in Funing County, Jiangsu Province, using the best-worst scaling (BWS) and a mixed logit model.

The results showed that the designation of responsibility for ensuring pork quality and safety was of, in descending order, feed producers and suppliers, backyard farmers and farms of designated size, pork processing workshops and companies of and above designated size, slaughterhouses, supermarkets, farmer’s markets, pig transporters, and consumers. Both pig farmers and pork consumers believed that those involved in the initial pork supply chain should take greater responsibility for pork quality and safety.

Allocation of responsibilities across the entire pork industry chain was investigated from the perspective of pig farmers and pork consumers using the BWS and a mixed logit model. The results of this study might explain the unique problems that occur in pork supply chain management in large developing countries like China.

In China, a major grain producer, rice losses during harvest cannot be ignored. The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent of rice harvest losses in major grain-producing areas in China by a sampling survey, and to further analyze the main factors influencing rice harvest losses using an ordered multinomial logistic model.

In this study, data were collected using a multi-stage sampling method from ten major rice-producing provinces/regions in China. On this basis, five counties were selected from each of these provinces/regions. In the actual survey, house numbers were randomly selected, and then corresponding farmer households were visited by trained investigators.

The survey found that 56.22 percent of respondents believed that rice harvest losses were 4 percent or lower in China, though there were differences among the provinces. The proportion of family business income, planting scale, mechanization level, timely harvest, and operational meticulousness had negative effects on rice harvest losses. On the other hand, farmers’ experience of employment as migrant workers had a positive effect on rice harvest losses. In addition, bad weather and short handedness during harvest significantly increased rice harvest losses.

The meaning of rice harvest losses was defined based on previous research findings on the definition of grain harvest losses and the realities in China. The current rice harvest losses in different areas in China were analyzed based on sampling survey data from 957 farmers in ten provinces in China.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal the actual consumer demand for traceable pork by investigating consumer preferences for pork with combined levels of traceability information based on differences in individual consumer preferences, in order to support the government in decision making regarding the gradual construction of safe food markets.

Combinations of four types of traceability information, including farming, slaughter and processing, distribution and sales, and government certification, with price were randomly designed. To identify consumer preferences for these attribute combinations of traceable pork, 215 consumers in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province were investigated using a real choice experiment and the mixed logit model.

Significant heterogeneity was observed in consumer preferences for traceable pork. The information of farming, slaughter and processing, distribution and marketing, and government certification could significantly improve consumer utility. Moreover, consumers had the highest preference for government certification information.

Although numerous studies have been performed on consumer preferences for food safety attributes using a real choice experiment, almost none of them focus on Chinese consumers. Therefore, this study is an attempt to fill this gap. The conclusions of this study can serve as a reference for the Chinese government in developing safe food consumption policies. Although Chinese consumers have cried out for improvement of pork safety, they have different preferences for traceability information; thus, the government must promote traceable food step-by-step, using consumer preferences as a starting point.

The purpose of this paper is to examine consumer attitudes toward and willingness to pay (WTP) for traceability of tea in China.

The authors used the payment card method to elicit WTP for certified traceable tea and logistic regression model to analyze the factors that affected consumers’ WTP.

The results revealed that most consumers in China were concerned over tea safety; however, their WTP for certified traceable tea was limited. Only income and the degree of concern over tea safety affected the consumer’s WTP for certified traceable tea greatly. When it came to consumers’ WTP a positive price premium, income level, education, and attitude toward traceability of tea significantly influenced the actual premium consumers were willing to pay.

The Chinese government and tea producers should pay attention when implementing tea traceability system. First, raising the consumers’ income contributes to the premiums that consumers are willing to pay for certified traceable tea. Second, social groups, consumer organizations and tea producers should popularize knowledge of tea traceability. Third, given the low price premiums that consumers are willing to pay, the establishment of viable traceability of tea in China requires the producers and the government to bear some of the cost associated with the implementation of this system.

In past studies on WTP for certified traceable food, the study is focussed on meat in developed countries, and the research has expanded range of study, by conducting a survey in China to determine consumers’ WTP for certified traceable tea, and by empirically examining the main factors that influence the willingness of consumers to pay a price premium for certified traceable tea, as well as the premium that these consumers are willing to pay.

Pesticide residue is a stubborn problem affecting the quality and safety of agricultural products in China, and has not yet been fundamentally resolved. The purpose of this paper is to study farmers' perception of pesticide residues, as well as the main factors affecting their perception from the viewpoint of farmers. Additionally, this research attempts to explore the basic characteristics of pesticide residues arising in the process of producing agricultural products under the prevailing policy background, so as to provide decision‐making references for the Chinese government to deepen the security management system of agricultural products.

The structural equation model (SEM) is an analytical tool for the observation and treatment of latent variables that are difficult to observe directly, and for the consideration of inevitable errors. This paper investigates the main factors affecting farmers' perception of pesticide residues in the investigated regions based on the SEM and samples of 241 farmers in six counties (cities and regions) of three districts in the Jiangsu Province of China.

According to the research, regional difference, farmers' gender, age, years of education, pesticide training and their own demand for safe agricultural products had different influences on their perception of pesticide residues. Additionally, it was difficult to measure the influence of family characteristics on farmers' perception of pesticide residues. Although the present paper only shows a preliminary study, its conclusion provides a reference value for the Chinese government to deepen the reform of the quality and safety regulatory system of agricultural products.

There are many similar studies in overseas countries, but the application of SEM in the study of the main factors affecting farmers' perception of pesticide residues has not been completely reported previously in domestic literatures. The research assumption of this paper has practically verified that corresponding research conclusions of foreign scholars in this field have universality in China.

In September 2008, all of China was shocked by the tainted milk scandal. In order to help the Chinese government to establish a food traceability system (FTS), the authors conducted the present research which aims to investigate the acceptability of certified traceable (CT) food among Chinese consumers.

A survey consisting of face‐to‐face interviews with 1,757 consumers from 13 cities in the Jiangsu Province of China was used. The 13 cities fell into three different categories according to their levels of economic development. The acceptance and purchase of CT food were compared and analyzed in the three levels of consumers. The factors affecting consumer unwillingness to purchase CT food were obtained by factor analysis.

After the respondents were fully informed about FTS, their acceptance level for CT food significantly increased. The respondents who were willing to buy CT food particularly preferred milk, eggs, and honey as well as meats such as pork, beef, mutton, chicken and duck. Of the total respondents, 68 per cent stated that they would be willing to pay extra for CT food. The main factors affecting consumer unwillingness to buy CT food were: lack of familiarity with CT food and doubt about its function, preference for direct and concise food quality labels, and worries regarding excessively high prices.

Ultimately, it is hoped to improve the overall safety of food in China and potentially worldwide. The Chinese government has to ensure the effectiveness of the FTS, to increase public knowledge about the FTS, to allocate government funds for the establishment of a FTS, and to give extra support to underdeveloped regions. These are the key issues that the Chinese government faces in establishing and popularizing the food traceability system.

This paper researched the acceptability of CT food among Chinese consumers and the factors preventing its acceptance. It provides valuable information for developing countries while seeking to raise China's food safety levels.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal the distributional characteristics and evolutional patterns in source periodicals, topics, authors, funding, and institutes of research papers in Chinese Agricultural Economics so as to understand the current situations and developmental tendency of Chinese agricultural economics research over the past decade.

Using the citation analysis method, this paper analyzed the distributional characteristics and evolution of source periodicals, fields, authors and topics of 2,203 highly cited journal papers from the database of China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and 189 cited journal papers from database of Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) in agricultural economics first-authored by Chinese scholars from 2006 to 2015.

First, over the past decade, agricultural economics research in China has seen a rapid development. Specially, 103 scholars and 42 institutes have played key roles in the development, and 12 Chinese periodicals and 3 international journals have been the most influential outlets. Second, the coverage of the topics in Chinese agricultural economics research is broad and has expanded over the past decade. The rural land issue has been the most popular topic, while the issues regarding rural institutional arrangements and industrialization in rural areas have been explored extensively. However, issues in other fields, such as agricultural markets and trade, rural labor, food safety, etc. have to be further studied. Third, the improvements of economic theory and quantitative analytic techniques, the supports from research funding, and an increase in the collaboration between Chinese scholars and those from other countries have made great contribution to the rapid development of Chinese agricultural economics research over the past decade.

This paper is an original work that identifies the most influential journal papers including highly cited journal papers from CNKI and cited journal papers from SSCI, using citation frequency and standard Essential Science Indicators method. This is a contribution relative to the methods used by previous studies, which did not account for frequency of citation of a paper. Moreover, this study is based on data from two databases, CNKI and SSCI, suggesting that the coverage of sample papers is broader compared to those of previous studies.

This paper aims to establish a multi-input equilibrium manifold expansion (EME) model for gas turbine (GT). It proposes that the extension of model input dimension is realized based on similarity theory and affine structure in the framework of single-input EME model. The study aims to expand the scope of application of the EME model so that it can be used for the control or fault diagnosis of GTs.

In this paper, the concepts of corrected equilibrium manifold expansion (CEME) model and multi-cell equilibrium manifold expansion (MEME) model are first proposed. This paper uses theoretical analysis and simulation experiments to demonstrate the effectiveness of the bilayer equilibrium manifold expansion (BEME) model, which is a combination of the CEME and the MEME models. Simulation experiments include confirmatory experiments and comparative experiments.

The paper provides a new sight into building a multiple-input EME (MI-EME) model for GTs. The proposed method can build an accurate and robust MI-EME model that has superior performance compared with widely used nonlinear models including Wiener model (WM), Hammerstein model (HM), Hammerstein–Wiener model (HWM) and nonlinear autoregressive with exogenous inputs (NARX) network model. In terms of accuracy, the maximum error percentage of the proposed model is just 1.309%, far less than WM, HM and HWM. In terms of the stability of model calculation, the range of the mean error percentage of the proposed model is just a quarter of that of NARX network model.

The paper fulfills the construction of a novel multi-input nonlinear model, which has laid a foundation for the follow-up research of model-based GT fault detection and isolation or GT control.