Consumer Perceptions And Attitudes Toward Genetically Modified Food And Their Determinants

GM Food has been developing at an unprecedented rate. In the recent seven years, its' planting area grows thirty-five times. More than half of world's population lived in countries where GM crops are approved and grown today. But it spurs the worldwide debate more and more not only on the research of biotechnology but also many trade policies and management. Those debates have brought some depressing impact on the prospect of GM Food. As a developing country, we expect GM Food helps to improve the nation's food security, sustainable development and improve agricultural competitive position in international markets. At the same time we should not ignore their possible risks with regard to food safety and unpredictable environmental hazards. It is a question whether China should continue to promote its GM biotechnology.Consumer plays a crucial role on development of GM Food in the future, as the commercial success of GM foods depends upon whether the public accepts it. It is very important for policy makers and industry to make it clear. Many investigates have been conducted in many countries while it is lack in chinaThis paper reports a study of the consumer's perceptions and attitude toward GM Food and their determinants based on a public survey conducted in twenty-one supermarkets of Beijing. To analysis the factors impacting the perceptions and attitude of consumer, Probit model is used to compute the survey data.We find that consumer has a general knowledge toward GM Food, but there are lots of misunderstandings. As a whole, the attitude toward GM Food is optimistic. The perception toward GM Food is a vital factor to consumer's attitude. Many demographic factors such as income, age, gender, occupation and education make effect indirectly by effecting the perceptions.It is the acceptance degree about different sides of GM food that plays the crucial role to attitude of GM food. The empirical results indicate that the more acceptance degree consumer believe GM food can improve quality of fame product, reduce the use of pesticides, protect environment, the more positive the consumer is to GM food. In the other way, the more acceptance degree the consumer believe GM food maybe have poison contains or impair the bio-diversity or there are huge difference between GM food and nGM food, the more negative the consumer is.