Do Worldviews Matter? Post-materialist, Environmental, and Scientific/Technological Worldviews and Support for Agricultural Biotechnology Applications

Andrew Knight

Journal of Risk Research, 2007, vol. 10, issue 8, 1047-1063

Abstract: This paper draws upon the social science literature to evaluate whether materialist/post-materialist, environmental, and scientific/technological worldviews predict levels of support for biotechnology applications. The novelty of this research is two-fold: 1) it incorporates the post-materialist hypothesis in risk perception models, and 2) it evaluates the effects of the these three worldviews simultaneously. Data from a regional southwest telephone survey in the United States conducted in Spring 2004 were used to investigate whether these three worldviews were related to support of various animal and plant biotechnology applications. The results illustrated that post-materialist values were not significantly related to support for animal or plant biotechnology applications. However, environmental and science and technology measures were related to support. One of the new ecological paradigm items, "humans have the right to modify nature," was consistently related to support for animal and plant biotechnology applications, and anti-anthropocentric values were related to support for two plant applications. General attitudes toward science and technology were related to support for both animal and plant biotechnology applications. The results provide evidence that perceptions of these applications are multi-dimensional and that respondents conceptualize animal and plant biotechnology applications differently.

Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13669870701603004 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:10:y:2007:i:8:p:1047-1063

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJRR20

DOI: 10.1080/13669870701603004

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Risk Research is currently edited by Bryan MacGregor

More articles in Journal of Risk Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().