RESEARCH ARTICLE


Consumer’s Risk Perception of Genetically Modified Food and its Influencing Factors: Based on the Survey in Jiangsu Province, China



Ruixin Liu1, 3, Linhai Wu1, 2, *, Lijie Shan1, Hua Li2
1 Food Safety Research Base of Jiangsu Province, School of Business, Jiangnan University, Wuxi 214122, China
2 Synergetic Innovation Center of Food Safety and Nutrition, Wuxi 214122, China
3 School of Tourism, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou 225127, China


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Creative Commons License
© 2014 Liu et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode). This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at 2Synergetic Innovation Center of Food Safety and Nutrition, 214122, China; Tel: +8613506179899; E-mail: wlh6799@126.com


Abstract

Safety has always been the focus of debate on genetically modified food (GMF). To understand consumers’ risk perception of GMF and its influencing factors, this study investigated 300 consumers from 6 cities in Jiangsu province, China by questionnare. The data were analyzed by using independent sample t-test, one-way ANOVA and principal component analysis. The results showed that most consumers worried about the safety of GMF and hoped GMF to be labeled with identity; meanwhile, their purchase intention of GMF was not high. Some of consumer characteristics including gender, education background, personal annual income, and with at least one child under 18, significantly influenced their risk perception of GMF. Furthermore, the main factors significantly influencing the consumers’ risk perception of GMF were as follows in order of influence degree: health risks (0.386), ecological risk (0.187), and social risk (0.163). Consequently, the government should strengthen the popularization of scientific knowledge on genetically modified technology as well as GMF and simutaneously reinforce standardized management of GMF label.

Keywords: Consumers , genetically smodified food, risk perception, factor analysis.