Public or Private Funding of Emerging Technologies: The Case of Gene Editing

Gene-editing technologies have the potential to address many of the critical challenges facing agriculture today. Yet, consumers’ perception of the technology, while critical for market success, is still understudied, and existing consumer support evaluations may not be reliable in estimating consumer attitudes to gene-editing technologies due to limited market applications. We conduct two studies and elicit US consumers’ support for gene-editing products using the donation experiment method. We document that, on average, participants support gene-editing technologies, and this finding is robust to different survey techniques using incentivized/hypothetical survey settings and public/private funding sources. We also find that the US public is less likely to support controversial technologies when a new production method is more likely to affect food product alternatives in domestic markets. Our findings are useful for designing future studies to reveal consumer preferences in related investigation domains where controversial technologies have limited or no current market applications.