Thai consumer willingness to pay for genetically modified rice

Abstract

Even though rice is the most important staple food in Thailand, to date research on genetically modified (GM) rice has not been allowed in field trials. Nevertheless, certain countries currently allow the production of GM rice, in order to prepare themselves for increasing domestic consumption. In the future, imported GM rice could potentially compete with Thai rice in both the international and domestic markets. This paper attempts to quantify Thai consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for GM rice. Sixty representative consumers were selected by convenient sampling to participate in the experiment. The demand-revealing mechanism chosen was the nth price auction. Subjects were asked to bid for GM rice and GM rice with additional advantages, namely additional nutritional value, herbicide-tolerance, longer shelf life, and no environmental hazards. The results show that Thai consumers are generally averse to GM rice, as the WTP for GM rice was discounted by 18.73%. However, Thai consumers do perceive GM rice with additional advantages indifferently from non-GM Jasmine rice; whilst the no environmental hazards GM rice received the highest premium.