Information, Consumers, and GMF: A Comment
评论了关于信息如何影响消费者对转基因食品偏好的研究，指出消费者信任不同信息来源（如第三方、政府、行业）的差异，并建议分析个体对信息来源的相对态度。
Traditionally, analysis of food demand has em-phasized the impact of prices and income tak-ing preferences as given. The growing impor-tance of food security and controversy about genetically modified foods (GMF) emphasizes the need to understand preference formation and how information affects consumer choices. McCluskey and Swinnen (MS) and Huffman et al. take different approaches to analyze these issues. Huffman et al. introduce an expanded household production function approach to analyze consumer trust of information sources about food. Consumers are assumed to be ra-tional and allocate their resources among food items that have differing labels. They lack in-formation about the meaning of labels and rely on various information sources. Their learning about food is affected by both human capital (HC), which reflects an ability to deal with dis-equilibrium, and is related to education, and social capital (SC), which reflects the impact of social relationships and networks. Their em-pirical analysis estimates the relative trust con-sumers have in various sources of information. Huffman et al. ask consumers about their most reliable source among several alterna-tives. Not surprisingly, only small percentages considered environmental groups or industry most reliable, while both independent third party and government were viewed by large fractions of the populations as the best sources. We would have preferred to view the individ-ual’s relative attitude to the sources. Gaskell et al. studied sources of difference in the ac-ceptance of GMF between the United States and Europe, and found: (1) the level of trust in Amir Heiman is senior lecturer of marketing, Department of