Vietnamese consumers’ preferences for traceable food and safety attributes: The case of water spinach

Journal of Asian Business and Economic Studies 
Volume 26, Special Issue 02 (2019), 47–70 
47 
www.jabes.ueh.edu.vn 
Journal of Asian Business and Economic Studies 
Vietnamese consumers’ preferences for traceable food 
and safety attributes: The case of water spinach 
HUY DUC DANG a,*, THUYEN THI PHAM a, GIANG THANH TRAN a, AU HAI THI DAM a, 
TRA MY THI NGUYEN a 
a Economics Faculty, Nong Lam University, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam 
A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T 
Received: Mar 1, 2019 
Revised: Jun 21, 2019 
Accepted: Jul 17, 2019 
Available online 
JEL classification: 
D12, D71 
Keywords 
Consumer preferences; 
Food safety; 
Traceability; 
Water spinach. 
The government struggles to fight escalating food safety issues in 
Vietnam. However, government measures yielded little evidence of 
improvement to domestic food safety. For that reason, consumers 
lower their trust in the government. The current market context, and 
low trust towards the government left consumers to count on their own 
judgement for the sake of their own food safety. This study applied 
choice experiment method based on Lancastrian consumer theory and 
random utility theory to elicit consumers’ preferences on traceable safe 
foods and the perception regarding food safety. The impact of food 
safety related attributes was identified in the order of decreasing 
magnitude: Freshness, label, traceability, certification, and price. 
Results suggested that Vietnamese consumers adhered food quality to 
food appearance (i.e. freshness) and made judgement with such 
perception. This paper also highlighted a noticeable reverse impact of 
the level of food certification on consumer preferences toward safe 
choices, which contributed to the current food safety situation in 
Vietnam. The reason was expected to be trust issues in the 
government, the impact of food safety context, and consumers’ false 
perception of food safety. To enhance trust, food traceability appears 
* Corresponding author. 
Email: ddhuy@hcmuaf.edu.vn (Huy Duc Dang), phamthuyen@hcmuaf.edu.vn (Thuyen Thi Pham), 
tthanhgiang@hcmuaf.edu.vn (Giang Thanh Tran), haiaudam@hcmuaf.edu.vn (Au Hai Thi Dam), 
nttmy.nlu@gmail.com (Tra My Thi Nguyen). 
Please cite this article as: Dang, D. H., Pham, T. T., Tran, G. T., Dam, T. H. A., & Nguyen, T. T. M. (2019). Vietnamese consumers’ 
preferences for traceable food and safety attributes: The case of water spinach. Journal of Asian Business and Economic 
Studies, 26(S02), 47–70. 
Dang, D. H. et al. (2019) JABES 26(S02) 47–70 
48 
to be an indispensable and potential instrument. Besides, traceability 
information should be addressed via food label precisely to augment 
visual inspection as well as to increase its effectiveness. Additionally, 
consumers are willing to pay a price premium for traceable products, 
thus inducing suppliers to participate in food traceability. Nevertheless, 
the government must play a more proactive role in market supervision 
and education to facilitate the development of food traceability. 
1. Introduction 
Vietnam was overwhelmed with food safety issue warnings on every media channel 
(World Bank, 2017a). From 2014 to 2015, there were 370 outbreaks of food-borne diseases 
(FBD) in Vietnam, which involved 10,000 incidences that resulted in the death of 66 people. 
The actual results could have been more severe, as World Bank (2017b) announced that only 
a small percentage of FBD was captured by the national surveillance system (in less than 
0.1%). Based on several sources, World Bank (2017b) estimated that hospitalization cost from 
food-borne diarrhea in Vietnam was around USD 6 million (noted that hospitalization 
represents only a small portion of the total cost of FBD). Besides, the burden of unsafe foods 
was commonly associated with the rapid growth rate of cancer cases, even though 
unhealthy living styles (e.g. smoking, alcohol abuse) or environmental factors were also the 
determinants. 
According to World Bank (2017a), the government responded with several courses of 
action. The government took actions in strengthening legislation and regulation, upgrading 
and certifying food chains, introducing good agriculture practice (GAP), modernizing retail, 
public information, and increasing exports. However, government measures yielded little 
evidence of improvement in domestic food safety. Literature reviews pointed out the failure 
of government measures for several reasons. First, low trust resulted in the disadoption of 
products with government certification stamps. Results were found in the case study of 
avian influenza outbreak in 2009 (Ifft et al., 2009a). Ifft et al. (2009b) confirmed trust issue 
with accessing safety-labeled and traceable free-range chickens in Ha Noi city, as 
households gave the lowest trust score (mean 5.28 out of 10) to market inspectors. The 
government implemented VietGap (Vietnamese good agriculture practice) in 2009 hoping 
to foster the modern agri-food system in Vietnam. Nonetheless, vegetable production 
volume of Viet Gap accounted for only 1.1% of total vegetable production (GSO, 2016). In 
fact, there was little evidence that participation in GAP made food safer or helped to capture 
extra profit (Nguyen-Viet et al., 2017). Indeed, after more than 10 years of major efforts and 
investments of the government and market actors, safe production and distribution systems 
have only secured less than 10% of the market share (World Bank, 2017a). Regarding 
modernizing retails by replacing wet markets with supermarkets, this policy delivered a 
contrasting outcome as this rigid approach failed to adapt to the differences in shopper 
population, resulted in driving a large group of shoppers into informal vending structures 
Dang, D. H. et al. (2019) JABES 26(S02) 47–70 
49 
(Wertheim-Heck et al., 2015), as well as unable to ameliorate food safety (Fahrion et al. ... e, the government should employ a comprehensive 
policy instruments to facilitate the transfer of modern post-harvest technology from research 
institutes and universities to help producers of traceable food to maintain a high level of 
freshness for their produces. Moreover, the government should play a significant role in 
cultivating markets for traceable food in order to gradually increase the exposure of 
traceable foods to the community. Changing consumers’ purchasing habit is a long-term 
plan that requires substantial endeavors with different approaches to ensure the result. 
Limitation 
There are three notable limitations in this study. First, the study only investigated the 
impact of factors based on variable levels. Further investigation on the impact of different 
attribute levels would elicit more useful details as not all attribute levels would be 
statistically significant and contribute to the knowledge of consumers’ preferences as a 
whole (see examples: Ortega et al., 2016; Wu et al., 2012). Second, the study was conducted 
on citizens of Ho Chi Minh city, which was hard to be representative of Vietnamese 
population. Thus, future studies should consider a more representative sample of Vietnam. 
Third, our sample commodity used in this study was water spinach, intended to use instead 
of meat to study consumer preferences for fresh produces. Van Rijswijk and Frewer (2012) 
suggested that consumer preferences may vary for different products. For that reason, 
further studies with different sample commodities may give more insights into consumers’ 
preferences. 
Acknowledgements 
All consumers, supervisors, and managers of the supermarkets and convenient stores 
who participated and facilitated the survey are gratefully acknowledged. We are also 
grateful for insightful comments of two anonymous reviewers. We also would like to 
express special thanks to Mr. John Maceda for proofreading and editing language for the 
paper. 
Funding: This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the 
public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.n 
Dang, D. H. et al. (2019) JABES 26(S02) 47–70 
66 
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