Review of Agricultural Economics—Volume 30, Number 2—Pages 233–251 Consumer Attitudes toward GM Food and Pesticide Residues

Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) vegetables will likely be commercialized in India soon. The tech-nology could reduce pesticide residues in foods. Yet it is unclear whether consumers will appreciate this health advantage, or whether potential GM crop risks will dominate their attitudes. Using contingent valuation methods and a sample of urban households, we find that almost 60 % of consumers would purchase Bt vegetables at current conventional veg-etable prices, indicating a high acceptance level. The rest would purchase at a certain price discount. Strikingly, the required discount increases for people particularly concerned about pesticide residues, demonstrating that risk-averse consumers do not easily offset technology benefits against perceived risks. Since the commercialization of the first genetically modified (GM) crops in themid 1990s, biotechnology has remained one of the most controversial topics in agricultural sciences. There is a consensus among researchers that biotechnology applications can contribute to higher crop yields and improved food quality with environmentally friendly agronomic practices. Indeed, significant productivity increases and pesticide reductions have already been demonstrated in several countries (Fernandez-Cornejo and Caswell; Qaim). At the same time, critics re-main suspicious about the wider impacts of agricultural biotechnology. GM food crops are argued to be associated with health risks for consumers, as newly in-troduced proteins could act as allergens or toxins and alter the metabolism of the crop (Altieri and Rosset). In addition, there are environmental, social, and ethical concerns (Ervin et al.; Welsh and Ervin; Greenpeace). Consumer concerns and risk perceptions have emerged as important driving forces of biotechnol-ogy policies in developed countries (Moon and Balasubramanian; Foreman). For Vijesh V. Krishna is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Agricultural an