The Impacts of Traceability Systems on Consumer Trust

The question of how the quality of traceability information using traceability systems contributes to consumer trust is of interest to scholars and practitioners. Commitment-trust theory was used to develop a model of how the quality of traceability information influences consumer trust in the context of food safety. A consumer-based questionnaire survey was conducted within Australia and Taiwan to test the models. Results of the structural model testing show that perceived risk increases the perceived informativeness of traceability systems. Importantly, traceability information about a product has a positive impact on consumer trust which in turn positively affects purchase intentions.