Author
Caputo, Vincenzina
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.
The social license between the US public and food producers has grown increasingly complex, especially as it relates to the treatment of farm animals and workers. In this study, we employ two best–worst-scaling experiments to elicit the public’s preferences regarding animal and worker welfare farm practices within the dairy and poultry industries. Using a latent class modeling approach, we find that US consumers generally value animal welfare practices more than they value worker welfare practices. However, population subgroups with strong preferences for worker welfare practices exist, primarily among older, highly educated, Democrats living in the Northeastern United States.