Decomposing the effects of time on the social acceptability of biotechnology using age-period-cohort-country models.

The study of European attitudes toward biotechnologies underlines a situation that is relatively contrasting in Europe. However, as different effects of time can influence the social attitudes (a life-cycle effect, a generational effect, and an exogenous temporal effect potentially affecting the entire population), an appropriate methodology should be used. To this end, age-period-cohort-country models have thus been estimated based on Eurobarometer data from 1991 onward. Applied to different data subsets, these models give similar results underlining the importance of the life-cycle effects as well as the heterogeneity of the link between political affiliation and biotechnologies attitudes across the European countries.