Transparency in Action: How Intrusiveness Levels Influence Consumer Perceptions of Sustainable Food Technologies

Climate adaptation in controlled environment agriculture increasingly depends on biological technologies that differ in how deeply they intervene in plant function. Genetic modification, beneficial microorganisms, and conventional plant breeding are often grouped together as climate-smart innovations, leaving consumers without a framework to differentiate them on the basis of biological intervention. We test whether disclosing the intrusiveness of each technology reshapes consumer choices. A nationwide discrete choice experiment with 4,824 U.S. consumers randomly assigned half of respondents to a control condition and half to a treatment condition labeling plant breeding as low intrusive, beneficial microorganisms as low-to-moderately intrusive, and genetic modification as highly intrusive. Without disclosure, consumers strongly penalize genetic modification but do not significantly differentiate breeding from microorganisms. Disclosure deepens aversion to genetic modification, eliminates the baseline premium on beneficial microorganisms, and modestly improves preferences for breeding. Heterogeneity analyses show that women, college-educated consumers, and political moderates respond most strongly to disclosure, while prior technology attitudes amplify rather than narrow the treatment effect on genetic modification. The results indicate that transparency about biological intervention does not uniformly raise acceptance of climate-smart technologies. It reallocates demand along a perceived naturalness gradient and can polarize as much as it informs.