Why do consumers express strong preference for Geographical Indication (GI) products yet hesitate to pay a premium? This study addresses this paradox by conceptualizing GI consumption as a staged decision process involving purchase intention, premium participation, and premium intensity. Drawing on signaling theory, we argue that premium formation depends on both trust in certification and consumers’ ability to decode label value under market disorder. Using survey data from 521 Chinese urban consumers and a Two-Part Model, we find a significant attitude–behavior gap: high stated preference does not automatically translate into premium payment. Institutional trust determines whether consumers enter the premium market, while GI label knowledge drives premium intensity. Perceived market disorder further strengthens the effect of institutional trust on premium intensity. These findings suggest that strengthening certification credibility and consumer education is essential for enhancing GI premium realization in emerging markets.

China’s housing purchase restriction (HPR) policy imposes administrative restrictions on households’ home purchase eligibility to curb speculative demand. We quantify households’ willingness to pay (WTP) to re-acquire such eligibility. The empirical results based on the staggered DID specification suggest that when local governments implement the HPR policy, the transaction prices of judicial housing auctions legally exempted from HPR increase by 18.91%. This HPR-exempted qualification premium can be converted to an estimate of 22.48% of the transaction price as buyers’ WTP for home purchase eligibility. The heterogeneity analysis also suggests that the WTP significantly increases when speculative incentives are stronger in the housing market. If policymakers in mainland China consider replacing the HPR policy with an additional buyer transaction tax like that in Singapore and Hong Kong, China, the WTP estimates can serve as the benchmark in setting the tax rate.

China frequently suffers from weather related natural disasters and is a source of wide-spread systemic risk throughout large swaths of China. During these periods farmers crops are at risk and for a largely poor population few can afford the turmoil to livelihoods that goes along with drought. Throughout the developing world there is serious interest in index-based weather insurance for agriculture, and in China the China Insurance Regulatory Commission is investigating the insurability of weather related risk. Beyond that little formal research has appeared on either the demand, use or design of index insurance in China. This paper provides a preliminary assessment of farmers’ willingness to pay for drought insurance. Based on a survey of over 890 farm households in Shaanxi and Gansu provinces the results show that while there is significant demand, price may be an issue. Our results show that the majority of farm households would transition from a no-demand state to a demand state as prices fall. This suggests that in order to gain wide gain adoption there may be a need for governmental intervention.