DETERMINING FACTORS AFFECTING THE CHOICE OF SUSTAINABLE FISH PRODUCTS: AN EMPIRICAL INVESTIGATION IN THE ITALIAN AND SPANISH MARKET

In recent decades, the fish stocks have been increasingly depleted, due mainly to the overfishing and illegal fishing. The perception of excessive fishing capacity led in the early 2000s to a review of the Common Fisheries Policy and the approval of regulations aimed at recovering depleted fish stocks and achieving greater sustainability in the sector. At the same time, the environmental awareness of consumers has grown, resulting in a greater attention towards sustainable products. Despite the new trend in consumption, few scholars have so far focused on consumer habits of sustainable fish products (Kirby and Ward, 2014; Asche et al., 2015; Asche and Bronnmann, 2017). To fill this gap, the aim of this study is to explore the main factors affecting the intention of consumers to choice sustainable fish products.METHODOLOGYTo achieve this purpose, a questionnaire was developed based on previous empirical studies on this topic (Grunert et al., 2011; Panda et al., 2020; Kiluchi-Uehara et al., 2016) and conveyed through the main social networks. The survey was carried out in Italy and Spain, two of the most important EU fish producers countries (EUMOFA, 2020), during the period January-February 2020. At the end of the survey, we obtained 324 complete questionnaires, with reference to the Italian market, and 289 for the Spanish one. The data obtained concerned information on the frequency of fish consumption, quality attributes of the purchased products, the values and beliefs of consumers, as well as their socioeconomic characteristics. Then, we performed two Probit regression models, respectively for the Italian and Spanish samples, in order to identify the main factors affecting the intention of consumers to choose sustainable fish products.RESULTSResults reveal a greater willingness of Italian consumers (82.1% of the respondents) to choose sustainable fish products, than Spanish consumers (69.2%). Furthermore, the research suggests that those who claim to have strong values of environmental protection and those who are sensitive to altruistic values are more likely to choose seafood produced in a sustainable way. Similarly, the importance associated to the presence of eco-labels on purchased fish products affects positively the intention of consumers to make seafood choices more sustainable. With reference to the socio-economic variables, younger consumers show a greater probability to choose sustainable fish products.CONCLUSIONSThe paper presents interesting evidence on the intention of the consumers to commit themselves to make seafood choices more sustainable, showing the main factors affecting this behaviour. Furthermore, the results of the study provide practical implications. On the one hand, the work suggests new insights for entrepreneurs and fish industry operators to define their marketing plans based on the characteristics of consumers. On the other hand, findings provide to policy makers hints for defining awareness campaigns among the population, aimed to increase sustainable purchasing choices by consumers. Despite this, the research is not without limitations, due to the online sampling method, which does not provide a representative sample of the investigated populations. For this reason, future research could extend the investigation to a wider audience and other European countries.