Abstract

The net negative evaluations play an important role in consumers' purchase intentions of GM food especially for Chinese. This study investigates the impact paths of net negative evaluations influence consumers' purchase intention of GM food. Specially, this study introduces two mediators-subjective norms and perceptual difficulties, which respectively reflect the external social impact and consumers' internal subjective judgment. Based on sample data of 317 consumer questionnaires in Beijing, this study tests those impact paths with Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) method. Empirical test shows neither the perceived difficulties (&betaH = 0.089 p = 0.076) nor mediating path (&betaH = -0.038 p = 0.298) is significant, that means net negative evaluations and perceptual difficulties can't directly influence the consumers' purchase intention of GM food, this result is different from former theories such as the Theory of Planned Behavior. And interestingly, the results show that the subjective norms (&betaH = 0.757 p<0.001) can act as a mediator in the impact path from net negative evaluations to consumers' purchase intention of GM food. Then further discussions are made to analyze these results. Finally, some suggestions are given with a combination of Chinese current conditions and situations of GM food.

Keywords:

Genetically modified food, perceptual difficulties, purchase intention, subjective norms, the net negative evaluations,

References