Do consumers really care about biotech food label? What do we know? What else should we know?

This paper examines whether biotech food labelling has an impact on consumers’ vegetable oil purchasing decisions. The paper first states that some countries, such as the EU, have implemented mandatory labelling policy. However, other countries, such as the US, have adopted voluntary labelling policy that leaves the decision whether to label biotech food to each enterprise.

The paper indicates that the labelling regulation of China is expected to have a significant impact on both international and domestic trade of biotech products. Nevertheless, the degree of impact is largely determined by consumers’ acceptance of biotech food labelling as well as the effect that the labelling has on consumers’ attitudes. Indeed, consumers in China express even greater concern over food safety than their counterparts in developed countries. Yet, a large portion of them choose to buy food in the market which they believe unsafe. In fact, factors other than concern over food safety play important roles in this regard, such as:

• belief in governmental food safety regulation
• concern over price, knowledge of biotech food
• strategic behavior
• convenient to buy food or not

Equally important, the paper underlines that all these factors are revealed in consumers’ actual choices, but might not be in their stated preferences.

The paper concludes that, in the short run, concern over biotech food labelling lowers individual consumers’ probability of purchasing biotech oil. Moreover, it increases their likelihood of purchasing decision change from biotech oil to non-biotech oil. In contrast, this may not be the case in the long run. The paper finally points that biotech food labelling is only one way to provide information. Thus, other marketing policies taken by stores and manufacturers that may affect the sales of vegetable oils should be also considered.