On the impact of trust on consumer willingness to purchase GM food:Evidence from a European survey

Many researchers try to explain consumer’s acceptance and opposition to genetically modified organisms (GMOs) using social factors like “trust” in “direct causal” or “joint causal” (also referred to as “associationist”) models. The latter approach considers attitudes to Genetically Modified foods (GM foods) to be jointly determined by trust and risk perception. With data from a European Survey (Eurobarometer 64.3, 2005), we use a recursive mixed process model to specify the importance of trust in the various organizations involved in the public debate on the acceptance of genetically modified foods on behalf of the “ordinary citizens”. We discuss the resulting portrait of European citizens that shows them to be increasingly optimistic about biotechnology, while being divided on this question. We show that corroboration of direct causal or joint causal models depend on the organizations concerned.