China was a major hotspot during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Several studies have reported changes in residents' eating behaviors and appetite during city wide lockdowns and home confinements. However, few have investigated how neuroticism interacts with the impact of COVID-19 to influence eating behaviors during city lockdowns. Thus, the current study aims to establish a pathway model to understand social media exposure, negative affect, neuroticism, and their interaction with eating behaviors during the COVID-19 lockdowns. We present data from 1,128 participants (Mage = 24.34 ± 10.48 years) who completed an online survey between February 17 and 27, 2020.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse the impacts of storage losses and market development on the maize-selling behaviours of rural households in China.Design/methodology/approachBased on the survey data of 543 households from nine major maize production provinces in China, the authors introduce storage losses to a household's maize-selling decision-making model and use fractional logit model and ordered probit model to empirically analyse the impact of maize storage losses and market development on household maize-selling decisions in China. To overcome potential endogeneity problems, the authors select the weather at drying (whether bad weather occurs during the drying process) and harvest loss as instrumental variables and re-estimate the model.FindingsThe results show that increased storage losses prompt farmers to increase the proportion of maize sold within three months after harvest and sell maize in advance. Meanwhile, the degree of market development has a significant impact on farmers' maize-selling decisions. Other factors, such as the maize output, non-agricultural employment and awareness of loss control, also affect farmers' maize-selling behaviours.Research limitations/implicationsThe government should promote advanced storage facilities, reduce household storage losses, decrease the phenomenon of centralised sales after harvest and help farmers freely choose the suitable time for sales. The government also needs to strengthen market information releases and publicity, reduce transaction costs and help farmers make reasonable sales decisions.Originality/valueThe authors introduce storage losses as a separate variable in a farmer's grain-selling decision model to empirically analyse the impact of storage losses on farmers' grain-selling behaviours. Moreover, the authors analyse the impact of market development on household grain-selling behaviours in China. These findings can help avoid oversupply in the market during the harvest season and alleviate the pressure on the market from the supply and demand imbalance. These results are also beneficial for farmers waiting for a higher price and increasing their income.

Approximately one-third of the global food supply is lost or wasted each year. Given that the harvesting process is the initial stage following food production, minimizing losses in this crucial phase holds paramount significance in augmenting the food supply and ensuring food security. The 1959–1961 famine in China was one of the most catastrophic events in history and had long-term effects on human beings, particularly farmers. This paper aims to provide a new perspective on the variations in harvest losses across age cohorts by examining the impact of famine experiences. Using survey data from the 2016 Postproduction Food Loss and Waste Survey conducted by China Agricultural University and the Rural Economic Research Center, which involved 3538 farming households across 28 provinces, we construct a cohort difference-in-difference (DID) model to investigate the impact of famine experience on household harvest losses. The standard cohort DID estimation results indicate that in areas with severe famine, a 1% increase in excess mortality would reduce the rate of harvest loss by 3%, suggesting that farmers who have experienced extreme famine have a deeper memory of the event, which subsequently helps them reduce harvest losses. Moreover, the results of the heterogeneity test reveal that the more serious the famine that the household head experienced in early life was, the less harvest losses there were, particularly for those who were adolescents during the famine. The findings elucidate the importance of historical events in shaping current behaviors and contribute to a better understanding of the variation in harvest losses across age cohorts.

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Modern people live in an environment with ubiquitous food cues, including food advertisements, videos, and smells. Do these food cues change people’s eating behavior? Since diet plays a crucial role in maintaining health, it has been researched for decades. As convenient alternatives for real food, food images are widely used in diet research. To date, researchers from Germany, Spain, and other countries have established food photo databases; however, these food pictures are not completely suitable for Chinese studies because of the ingredients and characteristics of Chinese food. The main goal of this research is to create a library of Chinese food images and to provide as complete a data reference as possible for future studies that use food images as experimental material. After standardized processing, we selected 508 common Chinese food pictures with high familiarity and recognizability and attached detailed classifications concerning taste, macronutrients, calories, and participants’ emotional responses to the pictures. Additionally, with food pictures as material, we conducted research on how people make dietary decisions in order to identify the variables that may affect a person’s food choices. The effects of individual perceived healthiness and palatability, gender, BMI, family income, and levels of emotional and restricted eating were examined using eating decisions based on healthiness and palatability as dependent variables. The results showed that people with low household incomes are more likely to be influenced by food taste in their dietary decision-making process, while individuals with high household incomes are more likely to consider the healthy aspects of food. Moreover, parental BMI affects what children consume, with children who have parents with higher BMIs being more prone to overlook the healthiness value of food.