Factors Affecting the Willingness to Consume Non-GMO Oils in Zahedan City of Iran Using Heckman's Two-Stage Method

Identifying the factors that determine the willingness to consume Non-Genetically Modified Organism (Non-GMO) products is an important step before identifying the market needs and marketing these products. In fact, examining the factors affecting the consumption and consumers' tendency towards Non-GMO products and prioritizing these factors can provide a clear and complete image to the planners and policy makers of the agricultural sector in order to have a comprehensive understanding of the level of demand; and the structures that affect it have complete planning to implement the necessary support policies at the required time and fully respond to the needs of the producers and consumers. In this research, the factors affecting the willingness to consume Non-GMO oils in Zahedan city of Iran were investigated using Heckman's two-stage method presented in 2022. According to the size of the population, based on Cochran's formula, a sample size of 300 people was selected in a simple random sampling method, and a researcher-made questionnaire was distributed and collected among them. The results of the probit model showed that the most positive and significant effect in terms of the value of the given total elasticity was related to individual attitude by 0.61; that is, the households would include Non-GMO oils in their shopping basket and replace Genetically Modified Organism (GMO) oils when they have the necessary knowledge about the value and health of Non-GMO oils and are aware of their benefits and harms. After the individual attitude, education has the most positive and significant effect with a coefficient of 0.24, which can be said that the level of education and individual attitude are probably consistent and the level of education can also influence the change of people's attitude towards health. After the two above-mentioned variables, income status of household has a positive and significant effect on the willingness to consume the Non-GMO oils, because considering the high price of these oils compared to the GMO oils, the higher the purchasing power of the household, the greater the willingness of households to consume the Non-GMO oils, which will increase in line with the health of the family. The results of the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) model were similar to the results of the probit model and showed that the three variables of individual attitude, level of education and income status of household head had the highest positive effect on the tendency to consume Non-GMO oils by 0.33, 0.57 and 0.15, respectively. According to the results, it can be suggested that by informing people in the society and changing people's attitudes as well as by improving the level of education and the income of people, it could be expected that the willingness to consume the Non-GMO oils in Zahedan city would increase.