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Figure 4 

Influence of seasonal fluctuation on pig consumption. The data are calculated by the author.

The influence coefficient of price on consumption is calculated by the price corresponding to the annual output. The statistical results are shown in Table 3.

Table 3 

Statistics of China’s live pig output, consumption, and annual average price from 2010 to 2017.

From Table 3, it can be seen that pig prices have an impact on consumption. The prices in 2012, 2013, 2015, and 2017 are close, with an average price of 15.215 yuan/kg and a relative change in average consumption of 1.0071. When the price of live pigs was lower in 2014, the consumption was higher. When pig prices were higher in 2016, consumption was lower. Consumers will form historical prices to judge whether the current prices are high or low and adjust consumption accordingly, which economists call “reference price effect.” According to the data in the table, the influence coefficient of the pig price on consumption is calculated to be 0.25.

Pork demand is adjusted with delay around demand indicated by commodity prices, so consumption will not have an immediate response to prices. According to this, the pig demand function is constructed as follows: Pork demand rate = SMOOTH (indicating pork demand rate, demand adjustment time)