Consumer Acceptance of Genetically Modified Foods:Traits, Labels and Diverse Information

New experimental economic methods are described and used to assess consumers'willingness to pay for food products that might be made from new transgenic and intragenicgenetically modified (GM) traits. Participants in auctions are randomly chosen adult consumersin major US metropolitan areas and not college students. Food labels are kept simple and focuson key attributes of experimental goods. Diverse private information from the agriculturalbiotech industry (largely Monsanto and Syngenta), environmental groups (largely Greenpeaceand Friends of the Earth) and independent third-party information is used to construct theinformation treatments. Food labels and information treatments are randomized, which is adeviation from traditional lab methods. Auctions are best described as sealed bid random n-thprice and not the standard Vickery 2nd price auctions. I show that participants in theseexperiments respond to both food labels and information treatments, but no single type ofinformation is dominant.[...]