Food Values in China

ABSTRACT Drawing a clear overall picture of consumers' preferences for food is essential for designing effective marketing strategies and promoting a healthy and sustainable food system. Based on China's unique food culture and food system, this study describes the Chinese food value system and designs a best−worst scaling survey with 2165 Chinese respondents to explore Chinese consumers' food value structure. Results show that Chinese consumers have similar preferences for food values with Western consumers, who all rank safety, nutrition, and taste as the important food values and rank origin and appearance as the least important. Interestingly, Chinese consumers consider price to be a less important value but place more value on food safety and nutrition. They also have a relatively high share of preference for medicine diet and antipoverty food value, implying a unique food system. This study also shows a significant heterogeneity in Chinese consumers' preferences for food values. Food values are significantly related to some particular food consumption, indicating that the distribution and changing of food values in the population can help identify the transformation of food systems.