Assessing the Consumer Acceptability of Vaccine Rice

A feature of much recent medical research has been to offer a range of treatment choices for a given condition. It is important therefore to understand patient preferences among the non-medical as well as medical features of these options. An instructive example is a variety of rice currently under development with recombinant DNA technology as an alternative to the vaccine injection conventionally used against cedar pollen allergy as immunotherapy treatment. We use a survey-based discrete choice experiment to examine and decompose the attitudes to this medical food, along with their likely net effects on final demand. Restricting the survey to allergy sufferers allows focus on the rice’s maximum perceived welfare benefits, in contrast to the ambiguous conclusions of previous studies. Patient characteristics, such as allergy severity, GM technology familiarity, and opportunity costs of hospital visits necessary for the injection treatment strongly influence the vaccine rice’s appeal. A successful marketing program for the new rice will require appealing to these direct benefits.