• Media type: E-Article
  • Title: Youth awareness and expectations about GMOs and nuclear power technologies within the North American free trade bloc: A retrospective cross-country comparative analysis
  • Contributor: Niankara, Ibrahim [Author]; Adkins, Lee Chester [Author]
  • Published: Basel: MDPI, 2020
  • Language: English
  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/joitmc6020034
  • ISSN: 2199-8531
  • Keywords: youth awareness ; sustainable development ; NAFTA ; expectations convergence ; technological transfer
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  • Description: 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.
  • Access State: Open Access
  • Rights information: Attribution (CC BY)