Information asymmetry between food suppliers and consumers regarding the quality of food safety is a significant contributing factor to food safety issues (McCluskey, 2000; Stiglitz, 2002). Food products possess inherent characteristics of trust goods, making it challenging for consumers to accurately assess product quality even after consumption (Dulleck et al., 2011). In the domain of public safety governance, the government, acting as a representative of consumers, assumes a crucial role (Song et al., 2020). In the context of increasingly intricate food supply chains, regulators and producers encounter substantial information asymmetry concerning the quality of food safety, which is a shared challenge faced by regulators worldwide. Enhancing the probability of detecting problematic food items is essential for effective control of food safety risks. Notably, both China and the United States, as the world’s largest economies, have made progressive investments in food safety regulations (Jin et al., 2021). In 2021, the U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) allocated $1.421 billion for food safety inspections (USDA, 2021). Similarly, China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) invested $2.689 billion in food safety regulations in 2021 (SAMR, 2022). These investments primarily target food testing costs associated with sampling and inspection, food procurement expenses, and the allocation of human and financial resources (Zhou et al., 2020).

Regulators have been employing food safety sampling efforts to elevate the probability of detecting problem foods and penalties to raise the cost of violations by problem enterprises, which is a common regulatory tool for global food safety risk control by regulators, and China is no exception (Johnson, 2020). For the severity of penalties, the Food Safety Law, revised by the Chinese government in 2015, has been described as “the strictest ever.” From the changes in the Food Safety Law in 2009 and 2015, the penalties for enterprises that produce substandard food (i.e., production violation enterprises) are as follows: the lower limit of fines for the production and operation of food and food additives contaminated by packaging materials, means of transport, and containers was increased from US$284 to US$711, 2.5 times higher than the original limit. Production and operation of pesticide and veterinary drug residues, microbial contamination, and other substances hazardous to human health exceeded the lower limit of fines from $284 to $7,111, 25 times the original. The addition of substances hazardous to human health, operating sick and dead, poisoned animal meat, and meat inspection and quarantine cases of an unqualified lower limit of fines was increased from $284 to $14,223, soaring to 50 times the original.

For the Chinese government’s intensity of food safety sampling, the number of batches of food safety sampling in China reached 6,954,400 in 2021, with the intensity of sampling reaching an average of 4.92 batches per 1,000 people per year and the respective food producer being sampled an average of 17.93 times per year. However, the food safety situation in China has not improved (Li et al., 2023). As revealed by our examination of the data on violating enterprises disclosed by China’s State Administration of Market Regulation (SAMR), numerous Chinese provinces have a high proportion of producers with recurrent food quality problems. For instance, in Anhui Province, China, the percentage of producers with recurrent food quality problems in 2019 was 59.4%. It can be seen that simply increasing supervision did not significantly reduce the production violations of food enterprises.

Although the Chinese government has invested more regulatory resources in food safety sampling, food producers’ perception of government regulatory efforts is not evident (An, 2020; Fan, 2021). Due to the apparent distribution characteristics of food products, the potential for unsafe food arises during packaging, transportation, and storage processes. Consequently, market regulators primarily focus their sampling and inspection efforts on the distribution chain, specifically targeting distributors (Jin et al., 2021; Zhou et al., 2022). China’s market supervision and administration system operate at four levels: national, provincial, municipal, and county. Sampling frequency typically ranges from 1 to 2 times per week. The data obtained from sampling are directly recorded in the platform of China’s State Administration of Market Regulation (SAMR). Non-compliant food batches are traced back to the food production enterprises and subjected to punitive actions by the respective territorial regulatory authorities. However, information regarding qualified food batches is not communicated to the producers. The distributive character of food determines that the local market supervision authorities only carry out sampling inspections on food products sold in the region, not on the production enterprises. The Local market supervision authorities lack comprehensive knowledge of the sampled batches from each food production enterprise within their jurisdictions, thus relieving SAMR from the obligation of requiring accurate disclosures to enterprises. Consequently, apart from the SAMR, only distributors possess this sampling information. However, distributors are burdened with the task of investing significant time and effort into calculating the number of samples for each food production enterprise. In a multi-level distributor food supply chain, it is even more difficult to transfer information effectively (Fei and Wang, 2016). As a result, food production enterprises can only grasp the number of food sampling batches for which they have been penalized without knowing the total number of batches for which they have been sampled. Furthermore, the intensity of sampling and punishment of each food production enterprise by the regulator is different, and it is difficult for enterprises to figure out the intensity of sampling and punishment in the industry and region.

Under the downturn of the global economy, the constraint of regulatory resources turns out to be a vital issue to be urgently addressed by the regulators of various countries. Information, a low-cost regulatory tool, has been generally employed in developed countries. However, from the perspective of practical policies of China’s food safety regulation, the existing policy focus and relevant research focus on sampling inspection of food safety, whereas information tools have been rarely employed (Zhou et al., 2022). The Chinese government is aware of this. To tackle down the problem of asymmetric government regulation information in the food supply chain, the Chinese government has established the food safety information disclosure system. Market regulators will employ the respective period of food sampling and unqualified information on its official website to achieve the effect of information disclosure for deterring enterprises. However, since the content of the food safety regulatory information disclosed on the official website does not present any vital information regarding enterprises’ concerns, such as the frequency of enterprises being sampled and the intensity of local government regulation, coupled with the cumbersome operation and insufficient publicity, enterprises’ utilization of the food safety regulatory information released on the official website is low (An, 2020; Zhou et al., 2020; Yang and Wu, 2022). As indicated by the research team’s studies in Shandong and Henan provinces in China, most food production enterprises only acquire information regarding their punishments, and they are not aware of the actual number of times the government sampled their enterprises, nor are they aware of the intensity of regulation in the region and the intensity of other enterprises being regulated, which provides a realistic basis for this study to reduce enterprise production violations through information interventions. The information regarding the strength of local government regulation and industry regulatory efforts was disclosed by compiling a food safety regulation information report, and whether the enterprises have ceased their production violations in the following year was observed to provide feasible support for the government to manage food safety problems through information tools.

This study makes valuable contributions to the existing literature in several significant aspects. Firstly, it identifies the prevalence of recurrent production violations among food enterprises as a key factor hindering the improvement of food safety in China. Importantly, the study highlights the feasibility of employing information tools to address the issue of repeated production violations in food enterprises, an aspect that has received limited attention in prior research. The findings underscore the substantial efficacy of food safety regulatory information interventions in significantly reducing production violations within food enterprises, while also generating noteworthy spillover effects within specific geographic intervals. These findings offer valuable insights to guide governmental decision-making in managing food safety concerns through the utilization of information tools. Secondly, the study employs a rigorous randomized intervention experiment conducted in a real-world setting. As previously mentioned, each food production enterprise was sampled an average of 17.93 times in 2021. The availability of publicly disclosed food safety sampling data from the Chinese SAMR provides robust empirical support for assessing the production violations of food enterprises.

Information asymmetry has been reported as a critical cause of the opportunistic behavior of food producers (Akerlof, 1970; McCluskey, 2000). Solving the information asymmetry problem requires effective regulation by regulators and institutional arrangements by organizations (Zhou et al., 2022). In general, existing regulatory instruments on food producers comprise administrative, which covers food safety sampling efforts (Jin et al., 2021), institutional arrangements for food safety sampling (Kong et al., 2019; Li, 2020), and penalties for substandard food products (Yu et al., 2023), as well as the implementation of a recall system for substandard products (Sohn and Oh, 2014; Zhang, 2015).

Information tools are another important instrument used by market regulators to manage food safety issues (Dranove and Jin, 2010). Research on the effect of information disclosure on individual decision-making has been well documented, but the above-mentioned studies have mainly focused on education, health care, and finance. Food and food services research is very limited (Zhou et al., 2011). Jin and Leslie (2003) showed that a quality rating card policy in Los Angeles, USA, not only significantly improved the hygienic quality of restaurants but also increased consumer sensitivity to food safety. Ollinger and Bovay (2020) showed that both credible threats and actual government action to disclose the quality and safety of chicken meat publicly could motivate chicken slaughterhouses to improve quality and safety. Using data from fish wholesaling in three Chinese provinces, Zhou et al. (2022) analyzed the positive effect exerted by a policy combination of food safety sampling intensity and information disclosure on supply chain traceability adoption. Furthermore, several research studies have highlighted that the evaluation and certification of sellers by marketplaces (Elfenbein et al., 2015) and the promotion of product labeling (Westgren, 1999; Kafetzopoulos et al., 2013) can facilitate the adoption of quality and safety management practices by product suppliers.

Information interventions and disclosures are both information tools, but they differ significantly. Information disclosure aims at publicizing relevant information to examine the decision-making behavior of relevant subjects, such that individuals are required to receive information and make adjustments actively. Besides, information intervention employs intervention to make the relevant subjects passively accept information. As revealed by a considerable amount of research using behavioral experiments with information interventions in health medicine, child development, consumer behavior, and farmer decision-making, information interventions can notably improve individual behavioral decisions (Hoelscher et al., 2002; Abrahamse et al., 2005; Fischer, 2008; Karlin et al., 2015; Young et al., 2017).

Enterprises need to make decisions based on information. Enterprise decision-making is a process of information flow and conversion. Accordingly, the effective transmission of government regulatory information is the basis for food enterprises to adjust their production behavior. The “nudge theory” provides the theoretical basis for this study. The original meaning of the word “nudge” in English is “to nudge someone to get their attention” (Thaler and Sunstein, 2008). Nudging aims at changing people’s behavior and how they choose and intervene in the choice system, placing stress on the need to make better choices while maintaining or increasing freedom (Hausman and Welch, 2010; Halpern, 2015).

Enterprises aim at maximizing profits, and higher returns from violations are the endogenous motivation for enterprises to choose to violate production practices. Although the Chinese government has enhanced its regulatory efforts, food production enterprises have not gained more insights into the strength of government regulation due to information asymmetry, and their underestimation of the expected costs of violation is an important reason why they continue to violate production. The facilitative role played by information interventions aims to affect the choice structure orientation of people’s behavior in a predictable direction without using prohibitions or obvious economic incentives. The information report on food safety regulations prepared for the study conforms to interviews with food production enterprises, and this study suggested that the above-described information can help enterprises make the right choices.

The Chinese government has raised more rigorous regulation a priority for food safety over the past few years, with 172,300 batches sampled in 2015 and 6,954,400 batches by 2021, including an increase of nearly 1 million batches between 2017 and 2018 alone, a growth rate of 42%. However, the Chinese government’s increased food safety regulation has not significantly improved food safety. One crucial phenomenon that was observed in this study was the repeated production violations by Chinese food enterprises. In theory, increased regulation can increase the violation cost, whereas the reality is not as practical as it could be. This phenomenon’s emergence due to information asymmetry was qualitatively explained (Zhou et al., 2020; Jin et al., 2021). Food production enterprises did not perceive the increasing intensity of sampling and inspection as evident and had a cognitive bias about the probability of violations being detected. Accordingly, the corresponding institutional arrangement can be an effective tool to ensure the efficiency of food safety regulation. Information regulation tools play a significant role in food safety regulation as a low-cost regulatory tool, which has become a consensus in the regulatory practice of developed countries.

This study’s findings reveal that interventions based on food safety regulatory information have had a positive impact on diminishing production violations in food enterprises. For each increment in the focus of information-based interventions, the likelihood of an enterprise reducing violations rose by 12 percentage points. The pronounced success of information interventions highlights the significance of information in enterprise decision-making. In the Chinese food supply chain, government regulatory information was inefficiently transmitted between distributors and producers, producers facing severe information constraints had a higher demand for regulatory information, and enterprise decision-making behavior was changed due to information. Regression analysis of control variables showed that with higher educational levels among enterprise decision-makers, information interventions were more effective in curtailing production violations, aligning with conventional wisdom. Conversely, the larger the enterprise, the lesser the impact of information interventions on reducing violations. This study’s information interventions aimed to inform enterprises about the intensity of government oversight and peer regulation, thereby encouraging compliance to avoid hefty penalties for non-compliant products. Larger enterprises may be less influenced by government fines, focusing instead on market-driven consequences and reputational damage from substandard products. For the enterprise debt ratio in the control variables, with the increase in the debt ratio, the enterprises would be less likely to reduce their production violations after the information intervention. Enterprises should invest much capital in improving product quality, and enterprises with high debt ratios were constrained by capital to change this situation. Enterprises were more willing to accept penalties from regulators than to invest in improving their production lines.

Furthermore, the study concluded that food safety regulatory information interventions have a notable delayed effect on the reduction of production violations in food enterprises. Addressing production violations is a systematic endeavor. Interviews conducted by the research team with enterprises that had violations revealed that technical issues, the aging of production line equipment, staff mishandling, procurement of raw materials, and challenges related to packaging, transportation, and storage were the predominant causes of non-compliant products, with the latter four contributing to the majority of issues. Initially, enterprises require substantial time to rectify the aforementioned production challenges. Additionally, with the escalation of government regulation, the probability of non-compliant products being detected increases, necessitating time and resources for enterprises to promptly recall affected products. The study demonstrated that the positive influence on enterprises’ reduction of production violations emerged 6 months following the information intervention and exhibited a significant increasing trend thereafter.

To examine the heterogeneity of different sources of an information intervention on the reduction of production violations of food enterprises, two forms of information intervention were designed for food enterprises in the form of cooperation between university institutions and government and information intervention for food enterprises in the form of university institutions. As indicated by the results of this study, the information intervention in cooperation between university institutions and the government was more effective in reducing the production behavior of food enterprises in violation than that of university institutions. As a regulator, the government was the most trusted source of information for enterprises. However, the influence of the administrative order of the government information intervention on the reduction of the violation production behavior of food enterprises cannot be excluded.

In this study, the moderating role of the degree of information communication between food enterprises and the degree of concern to regulatory information in reducing enterprises’ production violations through information intervention was also examined. The degree of information communication among food enterprises regarding regulatory information took on critical significance in enterprises to clarify the strength of government regulation. In addition, the current information disclosure system established by the Chinese government published information regarding food sampling and penalties in the respective issue on official websites. Although food enterprises cannot grasp the exact level of government regulation through the browsing of this information, enterprises paid more attention to regulatory information, such that more insights can be gained into government regulatory policies, and the level of regulation can be more effectively grasped.

Finally, the study also explored whether the information intervention can have a spillover effect on reducing production violations in food enterprises. The above studies show that communication between food enterprises regarding regulatory information plays a positive moderating role in reducing enterprises’ production violations due to food safety regulatory information interventions. The information exchange between enterprises after information intervention should encourage other enterprises to clarify their regulatory efforts and reduce production violations. The findings of this study confirmed that reductions in production violations of food enterprises following information interventions can have positive spillover effects within geographic intervals.

The increasing burden of food safety regulation expenditure is a serious challenge facing all countries. This study’s theoretical and empirical analysis provides some enlightenment for the government to reduce regulatory resource constraints and improve food safety. First, the government should strengthen the regulation while the corresponding institutional arrangements can achieve the effect of twice the result with half the effort. Effective regulatory information can raise the level of awareness and promote proactive control of food safety and quality (Jin and Leslie, 2003; Dranove and Jin, 2010; Ollinger and Bovay, 2020). Second, more sampling resources should be allocated to producers upstream in the supply chain. According to data analysis by Jin et al. (2021), only about 28.2% of SAMR’s sample tests were conducted at the producer. However, this data includes many “Having stores in front and factories behind” producing enterprises, and the sampling resources allocated to only producing food enterprises are very few. Third, food safety quality should be closely monitored for large-scale enterprises and enterprises with high indebtedness that have committed production violations. For larger and more indebted enterprises, government fines are difficult to shake for production violations and reputational mechanisms should be used to punish enterprises, such as adding them to a cautious selection list for cooperation with the government. At the same time, the violation information of large commercial supermarkets will be disclosed to consumers on time. Fourthly, the provision of food safety regulatory information to consumers is crucial. Making available food safety information that aligns with consumer needs can motivate consumers to alter their purchasing choices. This, in turn, exerts pressure on food companies to elevate their production standards.

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/Supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Ethical review and approval was not required for the study on human participants in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. Written informed consent from the participants was not required to participate in this study in accordance with the national legislation and the institutional requirements.

TZ: conceptualization, methodology, writing – original draft and writing – review and editing. TL: supervision, writing – review and editing, data curation, funding acquisition, and software. DL: visualization and data collection. YL: data curation and supervision. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.