The impacts of message framing on consumer preferences for gene editing

Framing the same information in different ways can influence consumers’ decision making. This study assesses the impacts of information framing tools on consumer preference for a relatively novel food biotechnology tool – Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR). Using an online survey of U.S. orange juice consumers, we randomized consumers into a control and two treatment groups (gain vs. loss framing) and used a discrete choice experiment (DCE) to measure and compare consumers’ preferences across treatments. We find that both frames are effective in reducing the degree of aversion towards CRISPR, but the gain frame carries a stronger effect.