CONSUMER ACCEPTANCE OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS

Demographic- Demographic characteristics turned out to be insignificant with respect to
age, gender, marital status and education, except age and education in the salmon model. Income
dummies are highly significant in the corn flake breakfast cereal model and have negative effects,
implying that the people with higher income tend to consume more GM corn flake breakfast
cereal. This result is somewhat surprising. Note that the number of children within the household
has a significant negative effect on respondents’ willingness to consume GM foods, as the
concern for younger children in the household would certainly decrease the consumption of GM
foods.

Price- Price is highly significant in the three models, suggesting that lower prices of GM
foods encourage consumers to consume more GM products.

McFadden R²’s in these models range from 0.5944 to 0.6537, which are actually quite
high for this type of cross-sectional data. In general, the results indicate that the willingness to
purchase GM foods is heavily influenced by the risk perception of GM foods to human health,
environmental and religious concern when consuming GM foods, as well as the perceived
difference between GM and non-GM foods. Also, the importance of food characteristics such as
“price” will affect consumers on their GM food consumption. The sensitivity to price is also
reflected by the significance of the price factor, showing that more GM food product will be
chosen if the price difference between non-GM and GM foods increases.

Demographic variables are not very significant. Only income and the number of children
in the household affect the consumer’s purchase decision. Surprisingly, the respondents with
higher income tend to consume more GM corn flake breakfast cereal, implying that wealthy
people are more confident on this GM product, and would not view it as particularly risky. We
are not sure whether or not this result is caused by the fact that higher income households in the

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