The Public as a Limit to Technology Transfer: The Influence of Knowledge and Beliefs in Attitudes towards Biotechnology in the UK |
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Authors: | Joan Costa-Font Elias Mossialos |
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Institution: | (1) LSE Health and Social Care, Cowdray House, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, UK;(2) Departament de Teoria Economica, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain |
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Abstract: | Transferring knowledge on new biotechnology applications in the European Union is restricted by limited public support. Explanations
for this limited support lead us to examine the influence of knowledge and beliefs in shifting attitudes towards the uncertain consequences of unknown technologies. In addition, this paper looks at the role
of perceptions of uncertainty as well as information channels. We denote as “knowledgeable” those attitudes that are held
by informed individuals and as “rational irrational” those attitudes purely reflecting political and moral beliefs. The empirical
analysis employs data from a UK sample of the 1999 Eurobarometer Survey 52.1. Results suggest that improving knowledge systematically
raises individual support for clinical biotech applications such as animal cloning, while attitudes towards market-oriented
biotech such as GM food remain systematically unaltered. When controlling for knowledge, significant factors within information
channels were gender, perceptions of risk and, in certain applications, religiosity. Findings also support the hypothesis
that knowledge driven attitudes arise from those applications where knowledge is shifted by perceived experience and thus
perceived information costs are small.
An erratum to this article is available at . |
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Keywords: | biotechnology attitudes information acquisition knowledge and rational irrationality |
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