ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agricultural and Food Economics
Media Reports Amplify Market Risk in Pork Prices: Consumer Online Attention Mediation and Policy Interventions Under Major Animal Epidemics
Provisionally accepted
- Hubei University of Chinese Medicine, Wuhan, China
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Frequent occurrences of major animal epidemic events often trigger severe fluctuations in pork market prices. As the world's largest producer, importer, and consumer of pork, China faces strong negative shocks to its swine production sector from such epidemics. In the new media era, media reports significantly accelerate the speed and broaden the scope of information dissemination and emotional contagion regarding major animal epidemics. These reports transmit epidemic risk signals to the public, generating a social amplification effect on perceived risks, which may influence both consumers' pork purchasing decisions and farmers' production behaviors. Consequently, shifts in pork market supply and demand exacerbate pork price volatility. This study adopts the perspectives of information economics and risk amplification to investigate the mechanism by which media reports on major animal epidemics affect pork price volatility, utilizing provincial-level panel data from China spanning January 2011 to December 2022. Key findings include: Media reports transmit major animal epidemic risk signals to the public, significantly magnifying the actual risks of major animal epidemics and exacerbating pork price volatility, with this effect being more pronounced in major consumption regions. Mechanistically, consumer online attention partially mediates the relationship between media reports on major animal epidemics and pork price volatility, demonstrating greater significance in major production regions; this mediating effect exhibits a single-threshold characteristic, wherein surpassing a critical threshold of consumer online attention mitigates the price-amplifying impact of media reports. Further analysis identifies a moderating effect of swine epidemic prevention and control policies within this mediating pathway, significantly weakening the exacerbating influence of media reports on pork price volatility. Consequently, strengthening media oversight mechanisms, rationally guiding consumer online attention, and promptly implementing policy levers emerge as effective pathways to stabilize pork markets.
Keywords: major animal epidemic, Media reports, pork price volatility, consumer onlineattention, risk amplification, swine epidemic prevention and control policies
Received: 10 Aug 2025; Accepted: 17 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ma, Zeng, Pan, Yan, Zhang and Cheng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Chi Ma, 3408@hbucm.edu.cn
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