Consumer attitude and willingness to pay for genetically modified food: A case study on Indian consumer and other issues

This research document comprises of three articles. The first two deal with consumer's attitude towards genetically modified (GM) food, while the third one is about regional economic impact analysis.; Cognitive processes have been identified as important determinants of choices, but have not been explicitly and systematically integrated into Random Utility Models (RUM). In our first paper we analyze Indian consumers' stated buying behavior of GM potato using an approach that integrates psychometric and econometric modeling approaches. We measure two latent variables representing perceptions of gene technology in food, and integrate them into a Random Utility Model. We interpret the latent variables to represent two distinct cognitive/attitudinal orientations towards GM foods which we tentatively identify as: risk/concern and benefit/progress. We estimate the model parameters using a simultaneous latent variable method. Interaction between intended purchase of GM potatoes, perceived result in two steps. First, we employ a latent class analysis with covariates to investigate the possibility of consumer segmentation (classes) in Indian market. We use various cognitive-attitudinal variables specifically related to GM food as the indicators of classification. In the later half of this study, we further investigate whether consumer's willingness to pay (WTP) for GM food vary over the classes from the first section. We found Indian consumers have significantly diverse viewpoint towards GM food and based on those views we can classify Indian consumer into six different classes. We also found consumer's WTP for GM food varies significantly over these six different classes.; The third article deals with a different economic issue: economic impact analysis. The land in Odessa Sub-area is fertile and produces very high quality potatoes. Over the last couple of decades, potato production in this Odessa sub-region has been possible primarily because of irrigation based on deep wells. However, the underground water is drawing down and potato production may shut down as a result. Therefore, an economic threat to the economy of the Columbia Basin is in the offing, unless alternative water sources are negotiated. We explore the regional economic impacts of the possible losses of potato production and its associated processing in the Odessa Sub-area.