Food safety concerns in urban China: Consumer preferences for pig process attributes

•Our results show that Chinese consumers are highly sensitive to food safety albeit with heterogeneous preferences.•Such heterogeneity could be explained by socio-demographic variables.•Our study suggests that very poor families living in smaller cities are those most concerned about food safety in China.

This study examines Chinese urban consumers' preferences for pig process attributes related to food safety. A consumer survey was conducted on 479 participants randomly selected in the cities of Nanjing, Chengdu, Wuhan, Changchun, Beijing and Guangzhou. The field survey was restricted to two kinds of retailing: supermarkets and local markets. The questionnaire included a contingent experiment to evaluate five different attributes of pig production processes, including food safety effort, stocking density as proxies of animal welfare, meat taste, origin of breeds and quality. Through a panel mixed logit model we found that respondents were highly sensitive to food safety albeit with heterogeneous preferences. Such heterogeneity is partially explained by socio-demographic variables. Our study suggests that very poor families living in smaller cities are those most concerned about food safety in urban China.