Information effects on consumer attitudes toward three food technologies: Organic production, biotechnology, and irradiation

It is important to understand how information supplied to consumers affects their attitudes about food technologies because these attitudes can impact market behavior. As technologies are actively promoted and cross-promoted, the relation between one’s knowledge of, and attitude toward, a technology may well depend on the source of one’s information. We examine the relation between knowledge and attitudes toward food technologies and find that greater self-rated knowledge of each technology is associated with positive attitudes about that technology. We also find strong negative cross-informational effects; increased knowledge of one technology leads to more negative attitudes of other technologies. This effect may be due to negative information being provided by opponents of specific technologies.