LAUSR

Abstract Agricultural biotechnology may help to sustainably intensify food production, but negative public opinion hinders the deployment of genetically modified crops and livestock. Previous research shows negative consumer attitudes in Europe and North America to be primarily driven by limited trust and religiosity, but public opinion elsewhere remains underexplored. Here, analyzing individual attitudes across 142 countries with conventional statistics and machine learning, I find support for genetically modified food in low-income countries to be 19 percentage points higher than in affluent countries. Globally, individual attitudes are primarily determined by living standard, agricultural output, and prevalence of undernourishment (p