Consumer Perceptions upon Food Safety and Demographic Determinants in China : Empirical Analysis based on a Survey of 512 Respondents

Based on a survey of 512 respondents from Beijing and Shanghai, this paper studies consumer perceptions upon food safety and the major affecting factors. In addition to the basic individual information of gender, age, educational background and employment, the demographic variables include professional experience of the respondent, family composition and annual income as well. The perceptions consist of overall awareness about food safety, major source of information and subjective reliability; understanding on the impact of environmental protection, main menaces to food safety, top source of agro-pollution, most risky procedure or stage; viewpoints on the major responsibility bearer of agro-pollution, best way to control agro-pollution. After the descriptive analysis on demographic characteristics and perception variables, One-way T-test reveals that all the 9 demographic variables are significant in identifying the discrepancies among most of perceptions. Moreover, further analysis is conducted on the impact of demographic variables significant in the level of 0.01. Finally, a variety of policy recommendations are put forward, from strengthening the supervisory responsibility of government, giving full play to the functions of mass media, consolidating the supervision of key sectors, to accelerating the extension of environment-friendly technology.