Bridging the Quality-Price Gap: Unlocking Consumer Premiums for High-Quality Rice in China

The transition of global agriculture from yield-driven production to quality-driven systems has gained urgency, where premium pricing strategies offer pathways to enhance farmer incomes and promote sustainable practices. As a critical staple crop, rice exemplifies the challenges of aligning producer standards with consumer preferences to realize market premiums. This study systematically evaluates determinants of consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for premium rice, integrating analyses of attribute preferences, cognition perception, and purchasing experience. Utilizing survey data from 1714 consumers across four Chinese cities, we employ principal component analysis to identify key quality dimensions and ordered logit models to quantify their impacts. Hedonic pricing theory informs the estimation of implicit prices for specific attributes. The results reveal that intrinsic characteristics (like nutrition) and extrinsic cues (like the brand), along with consumers' nutritional awareness, knowledge, and perceptions of quality-price correlation, jointly drive premium WTP. The mean acceptable premium reaches 4.52 yuan/500 g, with nutritional attention enhancements commanding the highest valuation (0.171 yuan/500 g). The findings underscore the necessity of standardized quality grading systems aligned with consumer preferences and targeted interventions to bridge information asymmetries. Policymakers are recommended to improve supply-side quality signaling through enhanced packaging and certification systems while strengthening demand-side nutrition education to facilitate value chain coordination and sustainable, high-quality development in agriculture.