Religious outlook shapes the attitude of agrarians towards genetically modified organisms: a survey-based analysis for Ukraine

Abstract

The aim of this study was to provide evidence on how Ukrainian agrarian feel about the problem of transgenic crops research and practical use both for industrial and food purposes. This is a survey-based study, accompanied with statistical analysis of the survey outcomes and. Artificial neural network-based prediction of the attitude depending on religious beliefs. Most of the respondents were Christians (83.13%), while the least number of representatives were among Islam and Buddhism religions (1.20% each, respectively). The highest general positivity towards GMO-technologies was recorded for Buddhism and atheistic respondents. The highest negativity towards transgenic crops was recorded for Christians. To some extent, legislative persecution also impacted attitude towards GMO-crops. High data asymmetry was identified among the datasets. The general predictive accuracy of the developed artificial neural network reached 58.82% with the F1 score of 0.31, indicating moderately low accuracy of the prediction. The specificity of the prediction was very high – 89%. Further studies will be carried out to enlarge the initial dataset and make it more comprehensive in terms of diminishing data asymmetry.