농식품 인증 및 전통식품 품질인증에 관한 인식조사

Abstract

This study attempted to understand the perception and the degree of trust that consumers had in the national agricultural food accreditation system, to inquire into and examine the consumers’ perception of traditional food quality certification performed for the protection of excellent traditional food, and to propose the right direction for the policies on the traditional food quality certification system and the plans to improve consumers’ perception of the system. According to the results of this survey performed in married women, based on the ‘the recognition of accreditation system’ and ‘the recognition of certification marks’ of ‘the seventh national agricultural food accreditation system’ presently being used by the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the household food purchasers showed high recognition for eco-friendly agricultural product accreditation, processed food KS certification, and organically processed food certification in that order. Meanwhile, it was shown that they indicated low recognition for the traditional food-related accreditation systems such as ‘traditional food quality certification’ and ‘food grand master’. It was found that reliability of the certification mark provided by the agricultural food accreditation system gained 3.54 points (on a 5-point scale), and 68.1% of the study subjects referred to the certification marks while purchasing agricultural foods. And most of them answered to the question of ‘why they referred to the certification marks’ saying that it was done ‘to choose safe food’. The most frequent answer to question of ‘the means to recognize the traditional food quality certification system’ was ‘broadcasting, advertising’. 57.3% of the subjects had a previous experience of buying a product certified by the traditional food quality certification system, and 93.2% of all the subjects had the intention to buy a product certified by the traditional food quality certification system later. And most of them answered that ‘strengthening government policies’ would be the most ideal way to inform the public of the traditional food quality certification system. According to the results of this study, while ‘relying on the traditional food quality certification system in general’ was relatively high among the consumers, ‘intention to buy quality certified products by visiting a distantly located store’ was low; thus, from this analysis, it can be seen that there is a need for diversification of places selling these quality certified products and to establish a distribution network for these products.