Willingness Study Of Adopting Herbicide-Tolerant Soybeans In Heilongjiang Province

The rapid development of biotechnology has greatly influenced such industries as agriculture, medicine, chemistry, environmental protection and so on during the late 20^th century. Along with this, the international controversy on the safety of biotech foods is becoming more intense. The controversy on biotech foods induced a set of debate in other fields, such as international trade, property rights issues and regulatory laws due to the huge economic interests with regard to biotechnology application.As the influence of biotechnology on healthy and environment is unconfirmed now, consumers' attitude and their preference, as well as the producers' intention of adoption, are the keys to the R&D and commercialization of biotechnology: consumers' attitude is the vital factor; with the consumers' acceptance of biotech-products, producers' adoption decides the extension and commercialization of biotechnology directly.The main purposes of this thesis are to investigate producers' willingness to adopt the herbicide-tolerant soybeans, and to find out the determinants of biotechnology adoption willingness. Under the assumption of the approval of herbicide-tolerant soybeans production, we collected data by a questionnaire survey offering relevant information on herbicide-tolerant soybeans, and analyzed the factors influencing the intention of biotechnology's adoption. We draw some conclusions from our analysis: 1) Producers in Heilongjiang Province know little about herbicide-tolerant soybeans; 2) Producers' satisfaction on weed control varies, and the improvement on weed control is expected; 3) The willingness of herbicide-tolerant soybeans adoption is limited, and the potential producers are less than 1/3 of the whole sample, even take the cost of herbicide-tolerant soybeans' seed into consideration; 4) The plus cost of herbicide-tolerant soybeans' seed influences the willingness of production, as well as demonstration time after commercialization permission; 5) The demographic characteristics of household, production of soybeans in 2005, and the attitude towards herbicide-tolerant soybeans after the information offering are the significant factors affect the adoption willingness.