The structure of public opinion (about Biotech) in The Making of Global Controversy

In a chapter in Bauer and Gaskell's book, Biotechnology: The making of a global controversy, some researchers analyzed what constitutes public opinion towards the technology.

Interestingly, they found geographical differences in terms of expectations towards biotechnology. Specifically, countries located in southern Europe are more optimistic about the technology, whereas those in the north are more pessimistic.

Another important finding pertains to the relationship between general attitudes towards biotechnology and those towards specific applications of biotechnology, such as food production, genetic testing, xenotransplant, and so on. The researchers found that these two sets of attitudes were closely related, suggesting that public opinion about biotech applications are very much based on their general impression on biotechnology. This finding somewhat parallels Kahan et. al.'s study which found that people holding positive views on other technologies also tend to be optimistic about nanotechnology. It also resonates with my own research which found that ambivalent attitudes toward Genetically Modified Food and Plants would also result in similar uncertain attitudes toward nanotechnology.

A quote from the chapter reads, "respondents applied general schema relating to biotechnology and technology to the more focused applications about which they were questioned" (p. 215).

Of course, knowledge is a critical determinants of public attitudes. However, the researchers found only moderate effects of knowledge (both subjective and objective) on the perception of risk, utility, moral acceptability, and encouragement. While knowledge was not associated with attitude differentiation, defined as the variance of attitudinal difference with respect to the six specific applications, it was connected to attitude extremity. In other words, those who had higher knowledge tended to have stronger attitudes towards biotechnology, either positive or negative.

One results that strike me is that religiosity accounted for only marginally the variance of attitudes. As we may know, the most controversial aspect of biotechnology rests with its interference with nature and the scientists' act of "playing god," it is surprising that religiosity, the main source of people's moral discipline, did not kick in as an attitudinal determinants. However, the limited effect at the individual level does not necessarily mean the same thing at the country level, as our recent study in Nature Nanotechnology has suggested.

The authors called for more well-designed information campaigns to keep people informed about the pros and cons of biotechnology. However, this call for more information should be understood in conjunction with several recent studies which identified the fact that people interpret information based on their value predispositions or worldviews. Simply providing information just does not help people understand the technology very much.

Nature Nanotechnology (December, 2008). Nanotechnology and the Public

For the first time, Nature Nanotechnology (Impact Factor: 14.917) published three studies on the social impact of nanotechnology in the same issue.

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Scheufele, D. A., Corley, E. A., Shih, T.-j., Dalrymple, K. E., & Ho, S. S. (2008). Religious beliefs and public attitudes toward nanotechnology in Europe and the United States. Nat Nano, advanced online publication.

Kahan, D. M., Braman, D., Slovic, P., Gastil, J., & Cohen, G. (2008). Cultural cognition of the risks and benefits of nanotechnology. Nat Nano, advanced online publication.

Pidgeon, N., Harthorn, B. H., Bryant, K., & Rogers-Hayden, T. (2008). Deliberating the risks of nanotechnologies for energy and health applications in the United States and United Kingdom. Nat Nano, advanced online publication.
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I will focus my discussion on the first two studies, since I haven't read the third one. To begin with, the Kahan and Scheufele studies shared a common theme--there exist something that shapes how people interpret messages. Kahan and colleagues suggest it to be cultural worldviews (such as egalitarian/hierarchical and communitarian/individualist ), whereas Scheufele et. al. see religiosity as the determining predisposition.

To say it simple, what these researchers argue is that the same information do not always conjure up the same meaning for people because they possess different worldviews and value predispositions. For people holding a egalitarian and communitarian worldviews, because of their pro-technology disposition, they tend to attribute information a positive light. In contrast, those who are individualist and hierarchical tend to see exactly the same information more negatively because of their proclivity to strive a balance between nature and technology, along with a balance between the rich and the poor.

Similarly, religiosity did the same job. Those who are more religious tend to see more risks associated with nanotechnology. What is noteworthy is that this relationship not only appear at the individual level, but also at the country level. Specifically, religion played a relatively important role in the US, as opposed to other countries with similar level of human development, which, in turn, leads US people to possess more reserved attitudes toward nanotechnology, compared with the more secular country such as the UK, France, and Germany. Such a difference in the level of religiosity and secular was also documented in the Secred and Secular book authored by Norris and Inglehart.

These studies were also covered by a lot of media organizations. For example:

Religion 'shun Nanotechnology' on BBC










Attitudes about nanotechnology vary according to religious and cultural differences on US News and World Report

Sjoberg (2002). Attitudes toward technology and risk: Going beyind what is immediately given

Prof. Sjoberg of Center of Risk Research in Sweden wrote an article about risk perception and the factors shaping it. He mainly focused on two technologies: gene technology and nuclear power.

As indicated by the title, this study goes beyond the properties of risks, which most scholars took as the essence of risk research. Specifically, he looked at other factors, such as the relationship between nature and technology as well as various types of trust with respect to their ability in accounting for public risk perception. In addition, he also examined how utility (benefit), risk, trust, and active risk denial accounted for general attitudes toward technology.

He found that the traditional "psychometric model," in which dread and novelty were considered as the main determinants of public risk perception, accounted for only limited proportion of variance. The addition of the variable--tampering with nature--increased the model's explanatory power. Furthermore, he contends that worldviews were not a good predictor of risk perception.

His result also indicated a less strong relationship between trust and risk perception than that of Siegrist (The influence of trust...on the acceptance of gene technology, 2000, Risk Analysis). He attributed this difference to measurement. Whereas Siegrist used the Likert scale for his measure of trust and risk, Sjoberg used ratings. Sjoberg demonstrated in this study how the "common response factor" may heighten the relationship between trust and risk, a very interesting methodological point.

In general, attitudes toward technology were accounted for mostly by perception of the benefits, followed by risks and, sometimes, the technology's "replacibility." The consequence of a risk was also found to exert more impact on public attitudes than the size of the risk itself.

This study overall laid out a bunch of important factors shaping public perception of risks and attitudes toward technology. However, it seems to me that too many variables were examined without a coherent theme explicating why these factors should be explored together with each other. Furthermore, as with other risk research, this study ask its respondents how "risky" a technology is without exploring the specific risks associated with these technologies. For example, people may consider nuclear power as risky because of the risks in relation to radiation, waste management, and safety, but not other areas. Of course, the 109 college student sample also posed questions for the generalizability of his results.

News coverage and risk

My work recently involves the examination of how media cover risks. The area of risk is broad and can include environmental, health, technological hazards and so on. During my search for literature, I come across a website: Risk: Health, Safty, & Environment.

Signal and Noise, by Boykoff and Rajan (2007), is another piece comparing news coverage of (environmental/ global climate change) risks in the US and UK.

An interesting idea is that something considered risky in one country/ culture may not trigger the same perception in another culture. My goal is to identify why and how these cultural difference in worldviews affects media representation of the risk issues.

Mass communications and agrobiotechnology.

Why should everyone care about the same environmental risk?

An article from the New York Times, Sustainability for rich and poor, has triggered some throughts from me.

The article talked about the different perceptions of the seriousness about global climate change in countries with different levels of economic development and personal well-being.

The deputy environment minster of Angola has made his point clear that the most immiment environmental concern of his country is the over-population of their capital city--Ruanda--and the ensuing infrastructural problems, such as sewage and waste. Global climate change is not on top of their list.

Well, this makes perfect sense. Countries with different stages of human and economic development will definitely define risks differently. And who has the right to decide what people should care about? Will people care about climate change when they don't even have enough food? Or do they even need to be concerned?

Dake and Wildavsky have published a series of studies, which highlight the influence of cultures and worldviews on what constitutes risks. Specifically, they suggest that people in the egalitarian, individualist, and hierarchist societies will define risks very differently (see "Theories of risk perception: Who fears what and why?").

However, what we see here is more than culture. The economic structure and human development (i.e., to what extent can people fulfill their basic needs of life?) also play a significant role in shaping attitudes toward environmental issues. This example not only strengthens the importance of taking into account country level variables, but also gives researchers good reasons to go beyond cultural factors when studying policy and public opinions of environment-related issues.

Nanotechnology data

Here are some newly-found data about public perception of nanotechnology.

Nanoforum is an European organization that publishs events, reports, and news about nanotechnology. One of its reports actually gave a decent overview about the debates surrounding nanotechnology; i.e., the balance between risks and benefits. For people who don't know much about nano, this is a good starting point.

Benefits, Risks, Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects of Nanotechnology

Although the report is not data-driven, it includes some findings from other research institute. For instance, there is information about media coverage of nanotechnology in Germany. It also includes an Internet poll conducted by the Royal Society in UK.

Of course, when talking about datasets in Europe, the European Commission is a good resource. In the "Publications and Events" page under the CORDIS website, there are tons of reports and survey results, although the pages for survey don't seem to work.

From the CORDIS website, I found a Eurobarometer special survey (#224, 2005) that asked questions related to nanotechnology. It seems comparable to another survey in 2001. But I haven't checked yet.

More about culture, value, and structural differences around the globe

Worldviews and values

Gallup World Poll looks very cool, but doesn't seem to have much information about Taiwan.

Henk Vinken's Website: Henk Vinken is a sociologist in Netherlands, who has done a lot of comparative studies on culture and values. This Website contains relevant publications and links. Absolutely useful.

Schwartz Value Survey.

International Social Survey Programme.

Country development

• World Development Indicators by World Bank

• Internet penetration rate (http://www.internetworldstats.com/top25.htm) (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm)
• Press freedom (http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=16&year=2007

)
• Newspaper circulation rate – Table 13 (pg 99) of the "Statistical Yearbook" of the United Nations. The 2006 volume is available at the Memorial Reference Desk, call number HA 12.5 U63v.2006
• Television sets penetration rate (see links below)
• Telephone lines / Mobile phones penetration rates (see links below)
• Personal computers penetration rates (see links below)
http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/
http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/handbook.html
http://www.unctad.org/Templates/webflyer.asp?docid=9479&intItemID=1397&lang=1&mode=downloads