Abstract
While food biotechnology has been widely applied and benefited the food and agriculture sector, community acceptance of biotechnology is still low. The factors that drive consumer rejection of food biotechnology have been well studied, but knowledge on the factors that drive willingness to purchase, particularly on an international level, is limited. This study aims to identify driving factors for respondents’ willingness to purchase fresh fruit produced with biotechnology, using an international survey conducted in the US, Canada, UK, France, and South Korea. While the overall willingness to purchase biotechnology produced fruit is low across countries, French consumers have the highest rate of willingness to purchase biotechnology produced fresh fruit among studied countries, followed by South Korea. The factors influencing respondents’ willingness to purchase include demographics, lifestyle, and shopping behavior. While respondents behave differently across countries, factors like environmental awareness, self-reported healthiness, and habits of eating away from home, have been found to enhance the willingness to purchase biotechnology produced fruit across countries.
Highlights
Biotechnology has been widely used in agriculture to improve crop yield, nutrition, taste, safety, and to protect the environment
Previous research showed a low support of genetically modified (GM) foods in Europe [16,24,36,38], our survey indicates that French respondents are more willing to purchase biotechnology produced fresh fruit than consumers in other considered countries
Willing to purchase biotechnology produced fresh fruit than consumers in other considered countries. This could be attributed to several factors such as the term used in this study (GMO vs. biotechnology), product of interest, different survey times, and the number of participants
Summary
Biotechnology has been widely used in agriculture to improve crop yield, nutrition, taste, safety, and to protect the environment. As one popular example of biotechnology, genetically modified (GM) foods have been commercialized in the US since the 1980s because of the associated benefits, such as increased productivity, decreased pesticide use and production costs [1]. After over two decades of GM crop commercialization, it is reported that 80% of packaged and processed food items in the market contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs) [3]. A newer gene-edited biotechnology, clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR), has gained attention and has an increasing number of applications in many edible crops, such as tomato, cucumber, and watermelon, for resistance against various diseases and extreme weather [6]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
