Who Do Consumers Trust for Information? The Case of Genetically Modified Foods

Wallace Huffman, Matthew Rousu, Jason Shogren and Abebayehu Tegene

Staff General Research Papers Archive from Iowa State University, Department of Economics

Abstract: To be effective, groups that disseminate information need the trust of consumers. When multiple groups provide conflicting information on a new product or process like GM-foods, consumers place different levels of trust in the various sources. We present a model of the contributions of personal and social capital of a consumer, and test a multinominal logit model of relative trust in five different sources of information on genetic modification using a unique data set. Among our findings is that an increase in consumer's education lowers the probability of trusting information from government, private industry/organizations, consumer and environmental groups, or other sources relative to information from an independent, third-party source, and conservative religious affiliation reduces the odds of a consumer trusting private industry/organization and increases the odds of trusting nobody relative to an independent, third-party source.

Date: 2002-12-03
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Published in American Journal of Agricultural Economics, November 2004, vol. 86, pp. 1222-1229

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Related works:
Journal Article: Who Do Consumers Trust for Information: The Case of Genetically Modified Foods? (2004)
Working Paper: Who Do Consumers Trust for Information: The Case of Genetically Modified Foods? (2004)
Working Paper: WHO DO CONSUMERS TRUST FOR INFORMATION: THE CASE OF GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS (2002)
Working Paper: Who Do Consumers Trust for Information: The Case of Genetically Modified Foods? (2002)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:isu:genres:10061

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