There is an increasing focus on environmentally sustainable seafood, which creates a potential for segmentation in the seafood market. Several recent studies demonstrate that consumers prefer ...ecolabeled wild seafood over unlabeled seafood. In addition, there is increasing evidence of a preference for wild fish relative to farmed fish, despite the rapid increase of aquaculture production. Recently, ecolabels have also been introduced for farmed fish. An interesting question is whether the preference for wild fish is primarily related to the perceived lack of environmental sustainability in aquaculture, or whether it is a perceived quality difference. In this paper, a choice experiment is used to investigate these issues in Germany for salmon using the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) ecolabel for farmed salmon and the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) ecolabel for wild salmon. Using a mixed logit model, the random parameter specification indicates substantial variation in consumer preferences beyond demographic variables. With respect to the main question, the ASC ecolabel not only makes up for the negative association of farmed salmon, but gives a similar price for the ASC labeled salmon as for MSC labeled wild salmon. This is an indication that environmental concerns and not quality differences are the major issue in segmenting the market between farmed and wild fish.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
Oyster farming is one of the oldest forms of aquaculture and oysters are farmed around the globe. As with aquaculture in general, oyster aquaculture production has increased rapidly in recent ...decades. Despite this, global trends in this production and its markets have received limited attention. This paper presents an overview of global oyster aquaculture production at a country-scale, as well as factors influencing the observed trends. Currently, global oyster aquaculture production is dominated by China, who accounted for 86% of global production by weight in 2016. Beyond China, production is stagnant, and is limited by disease, parasites, and regulatory issues, depending on the country. There appears to be increasing demand for farmed oysters that producers are not able to exploit due to the supply side issues that have limited total production. Additionally, a test for market integration found that there is no global market. Hence, while the increasing prices in some markets provides an opportunity, this is exploited only to a limited extent with Canadian exports to the United States as the best example.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
It is well known that the price of a food in general and fish in particular is a function of a number of attributes such as species, product form, processing form and size. However, limited attention ...has been given to the influence of private labels, production method, eco‐labels and promotions. We use a unique dataset which identifies these attributes in the German seafood market. We estimate a hedonic price function, and our results highlight the importance of brand and labels for seafood prices in Germany. Our results also suggest that private label products are discounted by 20%, while branded products achieve substantial price premiums, as do fish products from aquaculture.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Since the Blue Revolution began in the late 1960s, global aquaculture production has grown rapidly. Aquaculture now accounts for over half of the world's fish for direct human consumption and is ...expected to approach two-thirds by 2030. With aquaculture's growth, a number of high-profile concerns have arisen, including pollution, feeding practices, disease management and antibiotic use, habitat use, non-native species, food safety, fraud, animal welfare, impacts on traditional wild fisheries, access to water and space, market competition, and genetics. Managing these concerns requires thoughtful and well-designed policies and regulations. This manuscript reviews the contributions natural resource economics has made to evaluating aquaculture policy and regulation. Despite their valuable contributions, however, economists have been largely underrepresented in the debate. The primary influencers of aquaculture policies and regulations have been traditional fisheries managers, environmental groups, and natural scientists. We identify many important areas that should be more thoroughly addressed by economists.
Whether ecolabelled seafood actually provides incentives to improve the management of fisheries remains a controversial issue. A number of stated preference studies indicate a substantial willingness ...to pay for ecolabelled seafood. Early evidence from actual market data supports the existence of a premium, while more recent papers provide a more nuanced picture. In this paper, a hedonic price model for whitefish species on the German market is estimated that includes information on Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) labelling, the leading seafood ecolabel in Germany. The model also allows the potential premium to vary by species. Results indicate that MSC premiums in Germany vary substantially between species, from a hefty 30.6 per cent for the high‐end species cod, to a 4 per cent premium for Alaska pollock, and no premiums for saithe.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
The seafood market has changed dramatically in recent decades. Increased trade has created a global market for groups of species with similar characteristics, and the number of species that are ...becoming part of these global market segments continue to grow. Increased trade and stagnating landings of wild fish has also facilitated the rapid growth of the aquaculture industry and made it the world's fastest growing food production technology. The growth in aquaculture has been sufficient to also increase the per capita consumption of seafood globally. These two factors have allowed scale, modern logistics and marketing practices to be used also for seafood, increasingly commoditizing the main species groups.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
In Norway, the rationale for fleet adaptations has been subject to different interpretations and policies. While coastal settlement, a surplus fishing capacity and a negative resource rent were ...dominant adaptations until the end of the 1980's, market orientation and economic efficiency have gradually become the most central fisheries political goals. However, the rate of market-based transactions have affected the fleet structure, the distribution- and ownership of quota rights in a manner that challenge the legitimacy of the quota regime. Today, the ownership of the fish resources, a future resource tax and the legal status of being a fisherman are high on the political agenda.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
Does international trade make all parties better off? We study the relationship between food security and the international trade of fish and seafood between developing and developed countries. ...Specifically, we look at and discuss the evolution of trade flows – values, quantities, and prices – between developing and developed countries. The picture that emerges suggests that the quantity of seafood exported from developing countries to developed countries is close to the quantity of seafood imported by developing countries from developed countries. What takes place is a quality exchange: developing countries export high-quality seafood in exchange for lower quality seafood.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK
•Sustainability indicators determine what sustainable aquaculture has come to be.•Aquaculture certification schemes promote a skewed understanding of sustainability.•The schemes mainly emphasize ...issues related to environmental and governance issues.•Working towards sustainability requires a holistic perspective.
Sustainability certification has become an increasingly important feature in aquaculture production, leading to a multitude of schemes with various criteria. However, the large number of schemes and the complexity of the standards creates confusion with respect to which sustainability objectives are targeted. As a result, what is meant by ‘sustainability’ is unclear. In this paper, we examine the operationalisation of the concept from the vantage point of the certifying authorities, who devise standards and grant or withhold certification of compliance. We map the criteria of eight widely-used certification schemes using the four domains of the Wheel of Sustainability, a reference model designed to encompass a comprehensive understanding of sustainability. We show that, overall, the sustainability certifications have an overwhelming focus on environmental and governance indicators, and only display scattered attempts at addressing cultural and economic issues. The strong focus on governance indicators is, to a large degree, due to their role in implementing and legitimising the environmental indicators. The strong bias implies that these certification schemes predominantly focus on the environmental domain and do not address sustainability as a whole, nor do they complement each other. Sustainability is by definition and by necessity a comprehensive concept, but if the cultural and economic issues are to be addressed in aquaculture, the scope of certification schemes must be expanded. The Wheel of Sustainability can serve as a valid lexicon and asset to guide such efforts.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Abstract
The commons literature focuses heavily on rules and the behavior of resource users but places less emphasis on the returns to individual effort. However, for most resource settings, market ...conditions and associated resource prices are key drivers of exploitation effort. In a globalized world, import competition can strongly influence the incentives for individual resource users, a topic largely unexplored in the commons literature. Import competition is especially salient for seafood, one of the most internationally traded food groups. We analyze the US shrimp market, which was once dominated by domestic catches but is now mostly supplied by imports. For domestic producers (users of the commons), lower revenues result, while US consumers eat more shrimp at lower prices. Globalization changed the sources of price risk and compensation that domestic producers face and altered incentives to exploit the commons. In a market dominated by domestic supply shocks, the price response to a shock moderates the effect on revenue and effort. In a market dominated by imports, domestic shocks are buffered by import adjustments, while price movements are determined by global shocks. Despite losses for the domestic fishery, globalization creates new incentives to coordinate effort and capture price premiums determined in the global market.
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