Consumer Preferences for Genetically Modified Organisms in Cape Town: A Choice Experiment Approach

This paper reports a study done on Cape Town consumers, with the aim to understand how their purchasing decisions are shaped with respect to GMOs. A choice experiment approach was used to examine consumer preferences for biotechnology products in the food market. Four models were run to analyse the data, i.e., the conditional logit and random parameters logit models, with and without iteration terms. The results revealed a large status quo bias, indicating that the majority of consumers were reluctant to consume foods that incorporated certain technologies in their production process. The paper concludes by stating that producers need to align the development of GMOs to better meet consumers desires rather than suppliers. Finally, the paper takes an understanding that to increase the acceptance of GMOs, a larger portion of the population needs to be educated better about this technology.