Spring MVC 4: “application/json” Content Type is not being set correctly

First thing to understand is that the RequestMapping#produces() element in

@RequestMapping(value = "/json", method = RequestMethod.GET, produces = "application/json")

serves only to restrict the mapping for your request handlers. It does nothing else.

Then, given that your method has a return type of String and is annotated with @ResponseBody, the return value will be handled by StringHttpMessageConverter which sets the Content-type header to text/plain. If you want to return a JSON string yourself and set the header to application/json, use a return type of ResponseEntity (get rid of @ResponseBody) and add appropriate headers to it.

@RequestMapping(value = "/json", method = RequestMethod.GET, produces = "application/json")
public ResponseEntity<String> bar() {
    final HttpHeaders httpHeaders= new HttpHeaders();
    httpHeaders.setContentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON);
    return new ResponseEntity<String>("{\"test\": \"jsonResponseExample\"}", httpHeaders, HttpStatus.OK);
}

Note that you should probably have

<mvc:annotation-driven /> 

in your servlet context configuration to set up your MVC configuration with the most suitable defaults.