The healthy development of GM technologies largely depends on a positive attitude towards genetically modified food （GMF）.With a focus on Chinese netizens，a widely overlooked group in previous studies，this study explores their attitude toward GMF based on the classic heuristic-systematic model.By adopting data from the latest round of Chinese netizens’ social awareness survey，we found that the heuristic approach outperforms the systematic approach in explaining attitude.Furthermore，taking neutral attitude as the reference category，nationalism holds a consistent dampening effect； political trust only influences the probability of a negative attitude，while education level solely plays a significant role in affecting the likelihood of a positive attitude.Regarding information exposure，the unofficial information usage demonstrates a double-edged sword effect.