TABLE 3.

Factors related to public perceptions, understanding, acceptance and ethical principles of modern biotechnology.

Factors	Explanation
Attitude dimensionsa
Perceived benefit	• Usefulness or benefit was found to be a prerequisite for support. • If the applications were perceived to have significant benefits such as in health care, the applications were supported despite having some risks. • If the application was perceived to have only modest benefits, it was not supported even though the risks were perceived to be minor.
Perceived risk	• Perceived risk is also a substantial variable of encouragement. • If the perception of risks related to biotechnology is sufficiently high, no amount of benefits is likely to make it acceptable.
Risk acceptance	• Modern technologies that benefits are always accompanied by risks which posed serious dilemmas for societies. • ‘Revealed preference’ approach is based on the assumption that by trial and error, society has arrived at an “essentially optimum” balance between the associated risks and benefits. • ‘Expressed preferences’ approach measure public attitudes towards the risks and benefits from many activities and use the concept risk adjustment factor to establish levels of acceptable risks.
Moral concerns	• Societal and individual risk perceptions are proportional to moral values. • Individual who is willing to accept some level of risk, if the product was considered worthy and was not morally objectionable. • Fall into two classes: intrinsic (the process of modern biotechnology is objectionable in itself) and extrinsic (possible risks of different application of biotechnology).
Familiarity	• Whether a product contains a risky substance, whether the risk is known to science, and whether a person has control over consuming a certain product. • Five characteristics correlated highly with each other which reflected familiarity: observability, knowledge (known to those exposed), immediacy consequences, familiarity (not new) and known to science.
Encouragement	• Support or acceptability of a biotechnology application.
General attitudinal classesa
Knowledge and awareness	• More knowledgeable makes people more considerate to genetic engineering. • Perception of risk is higher amongst those with greater objective knowledge, and those who have discussed biotechnology over recent months, but such perception is low amongst those with little knowledge. • Acceptance of biotechnology by the public may not be related to awareness at all, in which regardless of whether individuals were aware of biotechnology, respondents were able to make a judgment about how useful or risky it was. • Those with more education may be better able to assess both risks and benefits of biotechnology critically.
Engagement	• Greater scientific knowledge is moderately associated with support for science. • ‘Attentive public’ approach: combine responses to the questions on awareness and talking to others about the subject of biotechnology. • ‘Informed citizen’ approach: people who have minimally heard of biotechnology and have a vocabulary of biological terms and concepts that is adequate for reading the science section of a major paper.
General value orientations (worldviews)	• Risk perception is defined by the norms, value systems, and cultural mannerisms of societies. • Those who are more concerned about nature are less optimistic about biotechnology, while those who embrace materialistic values are more optimistic.
General promises and concerns	• The general promise includes a set of items reflecting the promise of biotechnology to improve the quality of life. • The general concerns referred to the general reservations or concerns about the possible consequences of biotechnology. • People firstly form attitudes towards the overall risk and usefulness of the technology, and then only infer from these general attitudes how risky or beneficial a particular application of the technology is.
Confidence in key actors	• People come to know about new scientific discoveries and technological developments from the mass media such as television, radio, newspapers and books. • People often judge risk according to their perception of its controlling agents: if these controlling agents have a track record of secrecy, or they dominate supposedly independent regulatory bodies and the public policy process, then people magnify the perceived risks. • Without confidence in key players such as scientists, regulators, people are likely to have excessive perceptions of risks, as the assurances provided by the experts that the risks are low or manageable are treated with uncertainty.
Attitude toward Science and Technology/technology optimism	• Technology optimism refers to what the public feel about current technologies, whether they will improve his/her way of life in the next 20 years. • Those who are optimistic about one technology tend to be confident towards others. • Attitude toward Science and Technology or the impact of technology was found to influence risk magnitude and benefit of technological hazards.
Societal values (nature versus materialist)	• Ecological attitudes (which comprised of an aggregate of attitude towards environmental issues, impact of technology and post-material values) have shown considerable influence on both perceived risk magnitude and risk acceptance of technological risks. • Enthusiasts of biotechnology were found to believe in free-market economic (materialist), while the rejectors were more concerned about nature and the environment.
Demographic factors	• Demographic characteristics such as age and gender must be included because some researchers have argued that the continuing process of scientific discovery leaves older people behind and because men and women are known to differ on several science-related and technology-related topics. • Education needs to be included because of its strong connections with knowing and learning. • Peoples’ occupation and religious belief are also enduring characteristics that shape many social and political opinions on a wide range of topics.
Ethical dimensionb
Rights theory	• Always act so that you treat human beings as autonomous individuals, and not as a mere means to an end. • Right of an individual to make choices about their own life, and not to be subjected to the imposition of others.
Theories of justice	• The society has to operate with such principles of justice that cater to the well-being of the less fortunate members of the society.
Consequentialism and utilitarianism	• Consequentialism argues that one knows what the appropriate action is, not based on universal duty, but rather based on the outcomes of one’s actions. • Discussions those around risk and benefit whereby it is the consequences of the use of biotechnology that are seen as important, rather than any pre-existing understanding of one’s duty or the appropriateness of maintaining a given set of relationships.
Precautionary principle	• Given the unknown and unpredictable consequences and risks of biotechnology, opposers argue that regulatory policy should approach biotechnology from the stance of the precautionary principle. • With the precautionary principle as the default mode of regulation, the regulatory policy should evaluate biotechnology for its human health, animal health, environmental, social, economic, cultural, ethical, and reciprocal impacts.
Environmental ethics	• ‘Human-centered’ approach: the environment is valued for what it can provide for humans, and we protect it so that the resources will be there for our use and that of future generations. • ‘Ecocentric’ approach: the environment is valued not for what it can give us, but because it has intrinsic value, separate from any value that we may provide it.
Religion	• The spiritual division refers to religion or the belief of individual or people. • Acceptance and success of biotechnology will be based on the ideological beliefs and the cultural values adopted by individual human beings, who, in turn, will shape societal beliefs and values. • There are principles or guidelines on how we should live, and what is the right thing to do in most religions.

^aAdapted and modified from Amin et al. (2007).

^bAdapted and modified from Amin (2009).