IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/soceco/v37y2008i5p2095-2106.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Press media reporting effects on risk perceptions and attitudes towards genetically modified (GM) food

Author

Listed:
  • Vilella-Vila, Marta
  • Costa-Font, Joan

Abstract

Little is known about the role and mechanisms through which the press media reporting influences attitudes and risk perceptions. Whilst some approaches stress the prevalent idea that risks are partly the creation or amplification of the media, other scholars find that the media plays a rather neutral role as a conveyor only, which calls for further empirical exploration, especially in areas where consumers have limited knowledge. This paper examines both quantitative and qualitative empirical evidence to scrutinize whether the press media coverage and reporting had some effect on the change in attitudes towards and risk perceptions of new genetically modified (GM) foods between 1999 and 2004 in Spain and the United Kingdom (UK). Results suggest that differences in media reporting along with attitudes towards journalism correlate with attitudes and risk perception to GM food whilst trust does not appear to exert any significant effect. This result reinforces the hypothesis of a media bias in newly created technology risks.

Suggested Citation

  • Vilella-Vila, Marta & Costa-Font, Joan, 2008. "Press media reporting effects on risk perceptions and attitudes towards genetically modified (GM) food," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 37(5), pages 2095-2106, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:soceco:v:37:y:2008:i:5:p:2095-2106
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6W5H-4S92TMG-5/2/a2a25da9d050fb31a81f77bf36c47b77
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Anders A F Wahlberg & Lennart Sjoberg, 2000. "Risk perception and the media," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(1), pages 31-50, January.
    2. Sendhil Mullainathan & Andrei Shleifer, 2005. "The Market for News," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1031-1053, September.
    3. Lynn J. Frewer & Susan Miles & Roy Marsh, 2002. "The Media and Genetically Modified Foods: Evidence in Support of Social Amplification of Risk," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 22(4), pages 701-711, August.
    4. Michael Siegrist & George Cvetkovich, 2001. "Better Negative than Positive? Evidence of a Bias for Negative Information about Possible Health Dangers," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 21(1), pages 199-206, February.
    5. S.S. Vickner, 2004. "Media Coverage of Biotech Foods and Influence on Consumer Choice," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 86(5), pages 1238-1246.
    6. Verbeke, Wim & Ward, Ronald W., 2001. "A fresh meat almost ideal demand system incorporating negative TV press and advertising impact," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 25(2-3), pages 359-374, September.
    7. Sendhil Mullainathan & Andrei Shleifer, 2005. "The Market for News," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1031-1053, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Khachatryan, Hayk & Wei, Xuan & Rihn, Alicia, 2021. "Effects of pollinator related information on consumer preference for neonicotinoid labeling," International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, vol. 24(6), April.
    2. Jennifer Beverly & Peter Bothwell, 2011. "Wildfire evacuations in Canada 1980–2007," Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, Springer;International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, vol. 59(1), pages 571-596, October.
    3. Shapiro, Jesse M., 2016. "Special interests and the media: Theory and an application to climate change," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 91-108.
    4. James Painter & J. Scott Brennen & Silje Kristiansen, 2020. "The coverage of cultured meat in the US and UK traditional media, 2013–2019: drivers, sources, and competing narratives," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 162(4), pages 2379-2396, October.
    5. Dilshani Sarathchandra & Aaron M. McCright, 2017. "The Effects of Media Coverage of Scientific Retractions on Risk Perceptions," SAGE Open, , vol. 7(2), pages 21582440177, May.
    6. Shan Gao & Weimin Li & Shuang Ling & Xin Dou & Xiaozhou Liu, 2019. "An Empirical Study on the Influence Path of Environmental Risk Perception on Behavioral Responses In China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(16), pages 1-18, August.
    7. Touza, Julia & Pérez-Alonso, Alicia & Chas-Amil, María L. & Dehnen-Schmutz, Katharina, 2014. "Explaining the rank order of invasive plants by stakeholder groups," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 330-341.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Elina Lampi, 2011. "What do friends and the media tell us? How different information channels affect women's risk perceptions of age-related female infertility," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(3), pages 365-380, March.
    2. Aye Chan Myae & Ellen Goddard, 2020. "Household behavior with respect to meat consumption in the presence of BSE and CWD," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 68(3), pages 315-341, September.
    3. repec:lic:licosd:33013 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. McCluskey, Jill J. & Swinnen, Johan & Vandemoortele, Thijs, 2015. "You get what you want: A note on the economics of bad news," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 1-5.
    5. Alan S. Blinder & Michael Ehrmann & Jakob de Haan & David-Jan Jansen, 2024. "Central Bank Communication with the General Public: Promise or False Hope?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 62(2), pages 425-457, June.
    6. Robbett, Andrea & Matthews, Peter Hans, 2018. "Partisan bias and expressive voting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 107-120.
    7. Bennani, Hamza, 2018. "Media coverage and ECB policy-making: Evidence from an augmented Taylor rule," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 26-38.
    8. Author-Name: Alan S. Blinder & Alan B. Krueger, 2004. "What Does the Public Know about Economic Policy, and How Does It Know It?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 35(1), pages 327-397.
    9. Redlicki, B., 2017. "Spreading Lies," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1747, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    10. Giovanni Facchini & Anna Maria Mayda & Riccardo Puglisi, 2017. "Illegal immigration and media exposure: evidence on individual attitudes," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 7(1), pages 1-36, December.
    11. Bartosz Wilczek, 2020. "Misinformation and herd behavior in media markets: A cross-national investigation of how tabloids’ attention to misinformation drives broadsheets’ attention to misinformation in political and business," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(11), pages 1-22, November.
    12. Julia Rothbauer & Gernot Sieg, 2013. "Public Service Broadcasting of Sport, Shows, and News to Mitigate Rational Ignorance," Journal of Media Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(1), pages 21-40, March.
    13. Shane Greenstein & Yuan Gu & Feng Zhu, 2016. "Ideological Segregation among Online Collaborators: Evidence from Wikipedians," Harvard Business School Working Papers 17-028, Harvard Business School, revised Mar 2017.
    14. Goldman, Eitan & Martel, Jordan & Schneemeier, Jan, 2022. "A theory of financial media," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(1), pages 239-258.
    15. Vincent Bignon & Marc Flandreau, 2012. "The Price of Media Capture and the Looting of Newspapers in Interwar France," IHEID Working Papers 09-2012, Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies.
    16. Federico Vaccari, 2023. "Influential news and policy-making," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 76(4), pages 1363-1418, November.
    17. Samuele Poy & Simone Schüller, 2016. "Internet and Voting in the Web 2.0 Era: Evidence from a Local Broadband Policy," CESifo Working Paper Series 6129, CESifo.
    18. Germano, Fabrizio & Sobbrio, Francesco, 2020. "Opinion dynamics via search engines (and other algorithmic gatekeepers)," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    19. Felix Chopra & Ingar K. Haaland & Christopher Roth, 2019. "Do People Value More Informative News?," CESifo Working Paper Series 8026, CESifo.
    20. Luis Garicano & Richard A. Posner, 2005. "Intelligence Failures: An Organizational Economics Perspective," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(4), pages 151-170, Fall.
    21. Anil K. Kashyap & Natalia Kovrijnykh, 2016. "Who Should Pay for Credit Ratings and How?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(2), pages 420-456.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:soceco:v:37:y:2008:i:5:p:2095-2106. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620175 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.