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PurposeThe purpose of this study is to decompose the effects of country-of-origin labeling (COOL) into multiple dimensions—macrolevel image, related to the country image, and microlevel image, related to dairy industry/product attributes—and investigate how each dimension affects Chinese consumers' evaluation of imported milk.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopted the Becker–DeGroot–Marschak (BDM) auction mechanism to elicit consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for milk from different countries (New Zealand, Australia, Germany, France and China). The experiment was conducted with 348 shoppers at supermarkets in three major cities of China (Hangzhou, Wuhan and Shijiazhuang). The study subject was ultrahigh-temperature processing (UHT) milk (200 mL Tetra Pak aseptic brick package).FindingsThe results show that Chinese consumers are willing to pay a premium for UHT milk from New Zealand, Australia, Germany and France compared to domestic milk, and the premiums are 59.4, 58.9, 57.9, and 52.9% respectively. Both microlevel and macrolevel images exert a substantial influence on consumers' WTP, and the microlevel image has a greater impact on consumers' evaluation of milk than the macrolevel image. Particularly, the macropolitical, microtechnology/quality and microdesign/package dimensions have a positive influence on WTP for milk.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the existing literature in introducing the country-of-origin image (COI) construct with different dimensions to get in-depth knowledge about the country-of-origin (COO) effect in food or agricultural economics.

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This paper evaluates the effect of China’s New Rural Pension Scheme (NRPS) on the retirement sustainability in forms of formal labor supply and informal labor supply in terms of care of grandchildren, using data from China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). We explore the regional differences of the NRPS effect on labor supply between the West and the other regions of China. Our analysis shows that rural Western China has a more severe problem of “ceaseless toil” compared to the rest of the country. We find that NRPS improves the “ceaseless toil” situation of the Chinese rural elderly especially in Western China. Our results suggest the need to increase the amount of NRPS payment, and to develop a region-specific pension programs in China.