Abstract：The regulation system and capability of governments is the key component of modernization of China’s system and capacity for governance. From the perspective of institutional incentive theory， this paper tries to build a theoretical framework to understand the current situation of food safety problems and the regulators’ behavior strategies in China. On the basis of interviewing food safety regulators across four provinces， the paper proposes that regulators’ behavior choices in the process of enforcing institutions are shaped under the incentive of its institutional environment involving formal and informal institutions. Four incentive mechanisms shape the regulator’s behavior choice， which are incentive mechanisms of attention distribution， opportunistic behavior，softly-restrained commitment as well as career promotion. What needs to be paid attention to is that the incentive mechanisms of attention distribution and career promotion affect each other， and the incentive mechanisms of opportunistic behavior and softly-restrained commitment reinforce each other. It also finds out that the positive incentive brought by institutions may be transformed into the opposite one in the process of enforcing institutions.
2019, Vol. 58 
