Swedish consumers´ attitudes and values to genetic modification and conventional plant breeding – The case of fruit and vegetables

Abstract

This study examined public attitudes to genetic modification (GM) and conventional plant breeding and explored general differences in attitudes to these two types of breeding concepts, including the effect of individual personal characteristics such as gender and age. It also sought to identify the influence of personal values linked to attitudes to GM crops and conventional plant breeding, following Schwartz value theory. Relations between specific values and attitudes to GM organisms (GMOs) have been studied previously, but not gender-and age-specific relations between specific values and attitudes to conventional plant breeding. Data were collected in this study using a questionnaire completed on-line by 1500 Swedish consumers in 2019. The questionnaire covered three different aspects: 1) sociodemographic data, including gender and age; 2) attitudes to GMO/ conventional plant breeding; and 3) values, measured using the human values scale. It was found that consumers expressed more positive attitudes to conventional plant breeding than to GMO, men expressed more positive attitudes to both conventional plant breeding and GMO than women did, and younger consumers expressed more positive attitudes to GMO than older consumers did. A negative correlation between attitudes to conventional plant breeding and the value 'tradition', but no correlation to 'universalism', 'benevolence', 'power' or 'achievement', was identified for men. For women, correlations between attitudes to conventional plant breeding and 'benevolence' (neg.) and 'achievement' (pos.) were found. For both men and women, attitudes to GMO were negatively influenced by 'universalism' and 'benevolence', and positively influenced by 'power' and 'achievement'. The implications of these results are discussed.

Explore Consumers’ Willingness to Purchase Biotechnology Produced Fruit: An International Study

“…We found some common influential factors across countries. Aligned with previous studies regarding socio-demographics [18,39,40], younger respondents (38 years old or under) and those with a bachelor's degree or higher educated are significantly more willing to purchase biotechnology produced fruits than their counterparts in the US, Canada, and UK. Eating more servings of fresh fruit enhances respondents' willingness to purchase fresh fruits with biotechnology in the US, the UK, and South Korea (Table 2).…”

“…This could be attributed to several factors such as the term used in this study (GMO vs. biotechnology), product of interest (fresh fruit vs other crops), different survey times, and the number of participants. Moreover, it is worth noting that the level of concerns toward GM foods has been declining in European countries in recent years [18,19]. Regarding demographics, South Korea has a smaller share of elder people (over 55 years old) than other countries, with about 11% of the population (Table 1).…”

“…This might indicate that European consumers perceived a higher risk and lower benefit in GM foods [17]. However, the level of concern toward GM foods is changing over time, declining from 60% to 27% among European consumers, albeit they are not directly comparable due to different objectives and samples in each study [18,19]. Additionally, consumers' response to biotechnology produced food varies by food types.…”

“…Given the increasing adoption of biotechnology in the fruit industry, a few researchers started to investigate consumer preference for biotechnology produced fruit, most often GM [18,[24][25][26]. Marette et al [24] studied and compared consumers' willingness-to-pay for gene-edited apples that do not brown in the US and France.…”

“…Existing literature indicates that psychological and socio-economic factors affect consumers' perceptions of biotech foods [15,17,18,27]. However, as pointed out by Frewer [28], the factors that drive consumer rejection of novel technological food is better studied and understood than the factors that drive acceptance.…”