Consumer Willingness To Consume Genetically Modified Food:A Chinese Perspective

After investing thirty years in genetically modified food research and development,China has reached the point where they have to either abandon the GM food concept or at least reduce the speed of introducing technologically advanced food.GM organisms are subjected to continuous scientific,political,social and economic discussion across the China concerned their benefits,risks,safety perception,limitations and potential consumer response.Chinese consumer has every right to substantive information and education regarding the genetically modified food.Besides it,they appear to be miss guided by the contradictory information travelling to them in sensational way.China is one of the leading high-tech technology adopting country,in contrast most of the pop-ulation is against the production and distribution of technology-based GM food.Gen-erally,the greatest skepticism for GM food is expressed by the end consumers.After intense literature review,the thesis groups various aspects effecting consumer consump-tion willingness in three consecutive studies.The first study mainly integrates the perceived benefit-risk framework and trust,to investigate the Chinese consumer food attitude and its ability to influence the con-sumer GM food willingness.The proposed psychological-persuasive model highlights the Trust in Institutions holds least explanatory power while communicating about GM food related risks in the society.In case of mapping Perceived Benefits,the Trust in Technology should be improved,as in the overall view of BRA,the Perceived Benefits hold lesser explanatory abilities in contrast of Perceived Risks.In other words,strong communication strategy can change the public acceptance trend of GM food in China.Moreover,consumer attitude towards the food is the predominant factor of consumer willingness to consume.The second study emphasized towards the factors affecting the consumer percep-tion regarding social valence view and consumer willingness to consume 'Genetically Modified Food'(GMF)in Chinese population.The research highlighted critical domi-nating role of 'Health Concerns'(toxins and genetic hazards)in consumer willingness of GMF consumption.Moreover,the GMF Labelling strongly influenced ' Benefits Perceived'(trust)in society towards GMF.The current study concludes the interesting moderating role of 'Information Literacy' as it can potentially enhance the consumers'Willingness to Consume by decreasing their 'Health concerns' and by increasing the'Benefits Perceived'.Further it highlights the importance of effective communication strategy to convey the right value of GMF to the society and stakeholders in shortest possible time.The third study engages the theory of consumption values(TCV)to determine the influential factors sculpturing consumer willingness to consume genetically modified(GM)food and investigates whether there are significant differences in consumption values and food attitude between consumers with different cultural and geographic back grounds.The results indicate that Chinese consumer is more concerned of the ecologi-cal values and perceived knowledge are premier aspects that can improve the situation.Moreover,food technology neophobia inversely moderates in consumer willingness to consume.Further,the American data set reveals that the ordinary consumer holds pos-itive attitude towards GM consumption but worried of increasing involvement of food technologies.Whereas,food technology neophobia dampens the relationship between the food attitude and consumer willingness to consume GM food.Collectively all these three studies elaborate the gap between Chinese consumer and GM food.The studies contribute to the preliminary but the vital findings to craft effective and efficient promotional and development strategies.