Youth Awareness and Expectations about GMOs and Nuclear Power Technologies within the North American Free Trade Bloc: A Retrospective Cross-Country Comparative Analysis

Abstract

This study reports on the cross-country heterogeneity in youth awareness and expectations about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and nuclear power technology (NPT) within the North American free trade area (NAFTA). Models are estimated with data on youth respondents from the USA, Canada and Mexico, using seemingly unrelated bivariate weighted ordered probit regression, with maximum simulated likelihood estimation. Our findings show that the diffusion of technology and information within the trade bloc, for the 20 years prior to the 2015 data collection period, did not significantly contribute to cross-country convergence in youth awareness and expectations about GMOs and NPTs. Indeed, with regard to awareness, compared to youth from the USA, those from Canada show 15% (GMOs) and 7.1% (NPT) more awareness, respectively; while youth from Mexico show 34.4% and 19.5% less awareness about GMOs and NPT, respectively. With respect to expectations about future developments of the two technological artifacts, compared to youth from the USA, those from Canada and Mexico are 34.4% and 39.9% more optimistic about GMOs, respectively, while 15% and 49.7% are more optimistic about NPT. Overall, our findings show that the youth population within NAFTA is 2.5% and 6.7% more optimistic about GMOs and NPT for each level of increase in their awareness about the two technologies, respectively. Theoretically, our results seem to reject the hypothesis of NAFTA being a technology convergence country club in the Schumpeterian view, while seemingly supporting the existence of heterogeneous growth regimes within NAFTA.

Youths Interests in the Biosphere and Sensitivity to Nuclear Power Technology in the UAE: With Discussions on Open Innovation and Technological Convergence in Energy and Water Sectors

“…Relying on the evidence from studies using the theory of planned behavior in the United States, Craig and Sayers [58] reported young millennial risk perceptions and awareness of local clean energy initiatives, environmental orientation, and messaging to influence their attitudes toward federal clean energy policies. Similarly, in their recent cross-country investigation focusing on youths within NAFTA, Niankara & Adkins [59] reported a non-convergence in youths' awareness and expectations about NPT between the USA, Canada, and Mexico. However, their study found a 6.7% increased optimistic expectations from each level increase in NAFTA youths' NPT awareness.…”

“…No prior study in the scientific discourse addressed public awareness and expectations about the technology in the country. Moreover, as pointed out in the North American context, youths play a vital role in the long-run development of nuclear energy programs [59]. It is therefore critical to get a clearer picture of contemporary UAE youths' awareness and expectations about the technology, so as to properly plan for the sustainable development of NPT in the country.…”

“…The UAE subsample (its summary statistics are presented in Table A1 (Appendix A)) contains information on 6919 respondents. Adopting the same methodological approach as in [55,59,89], respondents' observed levels of awareness and expectations about NPT in the UAE are defined as:…”

“…Our econometric model follows the bivariate specification in [55], which was extended in [59,89]. They are all derived based on the bivariate latent variable framework presented in [90].…”

“…As in [59], identification of the model is achieved by fixing the first threshold parameter in each outcome µ 1 = δ 1 = 0 while setting the boundary cases µ 0 = δ 0 = −∞ and µ 4 = δ 3 = +∞. For j and k, any two indices on the two latent scales, the joint likelihood of SEN A i = j and SENE i = k is:…”