{"title":"Media coverage of food safety and expenditures for food away from home: empirical evidence from China’s family panel studies","authors":"Tao Li, Zifang Tian, Yang Wang, Caiping Zhang","doi":"10.1108/caer-11-2023-0323","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"PurposeThis study explores whether media coverage of Chinese food safety guide consumer behaviour and determines its impact.Design/methodology/approachUsing data from the China Family Panel Studies, this study implements unsupervised machine learning methods to quantitatively identify themes in news media coverage of food safety across various provinces and regions. Based on these findings, this study examines the impact of coverage of food safety on consumer behaviour related to FAFH.FindingsWe find that media coverage of food safety in the restaurant sector significantly decreases household expenditure on FAFH relative to total expenditure. While negative coverage substantially decreases expenditure on FAFH, non-negative coverage significantly increases it. Reports of food safety incidents outside consumers’ province are negatively correlated with expenditure on FAFH, whereas reports within province significantly increases such spending. Further, the negative impact of media coverage on FAFH spending is less pronounced among higher-income families, households headed by individuals with high educational levels and those with low sensitivity to newspaper information. A robust government information infrastructure also mitigates this negative impact.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings have important policy reference value for promoting the healthy development of catering and other life services by improving news reporting and the regulatory system.Originality/valueThis article employs machine learning methods to identify news reports related to food safety in the catering industry quantitatively and incorporates them into the study of household consumption in China. Consequently, this not only fills a gap in the existing literature but also provides a new perspective for interdisciplinary research in economics, sociology and computer science.","PeriodicalId":10095,"journal":{"name":"China Agricultural Economic Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.4000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"China Agricultural Economic Review","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1108/caer-11-2023-0323","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS & POLICY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
PurposeThis study explores whether media coverage of Chinese food safety guide consumer behaviour and determines its impact.Design/methodology/approachUsing data from the China Family Panel Studies, this study implements unsupervised machine learning methods to quantitatively identify themes in news media coverage of food safety across various provinces and regions. Based on these findings, this study examines the impact of coverage of food safety on consumer behaviour related to FAFH.FindingsWe find that media coverage of food safety in the restaurant sector significantly decreases household expenditure on FAFH relative to total expenditure. While negative coverage substantially decreases expenditure on FAFH, non-negative coverage significantly increases it. Reports of food safety incidents outside consumers’ province are negatively correlated with expenditure on FAFH, whereas reports within province significantly increases such spending. Further, the negative impact of media coverage on FAFH spending is less pronounced among higher-income families, households headed by individuals with high educational levels and those with low sensitivity to newspaper information. A robust government information infrastructure also mitigates this negative impact.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings have important policy reference value for promoting the healthy development of catering and other life services by improving news reporting and the regulatory system.Originality/valueThis article employs machine learning methods to identify news reports related to food safety in the catering industry quantitatively and incorporates them into the study of household consumption in China. Consequently, this not only fills a gap in the existing literature but also provides a new perspective for interdisciplinary research in economics, sociology and computer science.
期刊介绍:
Published in association with China Agricultural University and the Chinese Association for Agricultural Economics, China Agricultural Economic Review publishes academic writings by international scholars, and particularly encourages empirical work that can be replicated and extended by others; and research articles that employ econometric and statistical hypothesis testing, optimization and simulation models. The journal aims to publish research which can be applied to China’s agricultural and rural policy-making process, the development of the agricultural economics discipline and to developing countries hoping to learn from China’s agricultural and rural development.