Does Government Intervention Ensure Food Safety? Evidence from China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health
; 18(7)2021 03 31.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1378278
ABSTRACT
Food safety is related to public health, social welfare, and human survival, all of which are important and pressing areas of concern all over the world. The government plays an increasingly important role in the supervision of food safety. The role of the government, however, is also controversial. Using provincial panel data of China from 2005 to 2015, the present study intends to shed light on the associations between government intervention and food safety performance under two scenarios of local government-competition and noncompetition. This will be accomplished through an exploratory spatial data analysis and a spatial econometric model. The results reveal negative associations between food safety performance and government intervention without considering local government competition. As was also observed, government intervention not only inhibits the improvement of food safety in the region, but also has a negative spatial spillover effect on food safety in neighboring provinces. This is the result after considering government competition, thus, showing the competitive strategic interaction of the "race to the bottom". Further analysis reveals that, if geographically similar regions are selected as reference objects, the food safety performance of each province will have a stronger tendency to compete for the better. If regions with similar economic development levels are selected as reference objects, food safety performance will have a stronger tendency to compete for the worse. This work provides new evidence for the relationships between government intervention and food safety, and, also, proposes some insightful implications for policymakers for governing food safety.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Economic Development
/
Local Government
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Prognostic study
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
Asia
Language:
English
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Ijerph18073645
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