Media, Biotechnology, and Trust: What Drives Citizens to Support Biotechnology

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship among ideology, media science news use, and three different types of trust (trust in government, trust in science, and trust in regulative institute), as well as their direct and indirect impact on the support of agricultural biotechnology and the support of regulation on genetic modified organisms (GMO). A structural model showed that the public are slightly leaning toward the use of biotechnology; meanwhile they overwhelmingly request the control on GMO. Level of education directly promoted all three types of trusts and had a positive effect on the support of biotechnology and the support of regulation on GMO. Media science news use has both a direct and an indirect positive effect (through trust in scientific process) on support of biotechnology. Among the three different types of trusts, trust on government did not have significant effects on public attitude toward biotechnology. Trust in regulative institutes, associated with more control on GMO, decreased the public's support of biotechnology. Meanwhile, trust in scientific process directly bolstered public's support of biotechnology.

Between fascination and concern: an exploratory study of senior citizens’ attitudes towards synthetic biology and agricultural biotechnology

“…Consistent with prior research, older respondents were shown to be more conservative (e.g. Wang, 2017). Accordingly, an increased awareness for potential risks in the context of new and emerging products has been described (e.g.…”

“…Again, these results were validated by performing a Pearson's χ2 test to establish associations between groups and respondents' assessment of characteristic deployment examples (see Supplementary Online Resource 3) This outcome goes against prior studies demonstrating older individuals wanting more regulation (e.g. Wang, 2017). There is otherwise no tendency reassuring that senior citizens are less strict.…”

“…Building on the characterisation of people in later adulthood as a conservative sample in attitudes towards biotechnologies (Brewer et al, 1981;Wang, 2017), we hypothesised that senior citizens would ascribe a higher harm potential to common deployment examples. This hypothesis is in line with prior outcomes showing differences between more and less critical subgroups in the population, for instance a more critical attitude among female students and students from humanities and social sciences, as opposed to male students from natural sciences.…”

Trust (Social Science)

“…[51] Importantly, trust may be placed in non-human agents in addition to human targets. For instance, people may trust in animals, [52] in the scientific process, [53] and in social machines. Trust helps create a social contract that allows humans and domestic animals to live together.…”

Consumers' Evaluations of Genetically Modified Food Messages

“…In response to consumer demand for food information, media have increased coverage of food biotechnology processes (International Food Information Council, 2012;Perez & Howard, 2007). While increased news coverage on food biotechnology could lead to increased levels of trust and knowledge regarding issues in science (National Academies of Sciences [NAS], 2016b; Perez & Howard, 2007;Wang, 2017), the information presented has sometimes been sensationalized and focused on scandals and risks opposed to potential benefits (Galata, Karantininis, & Hess, 2014;Jayaraman & Jia, 2012;Mahgoub, 2016). Regarding GM food in particular, the media have focused on environmental and health risks , despite decades of research on the safety of the food (NAS, 2016a;Nicolia, Manzo, Veronesi, & Roesllini, 2014).…”