The past decades have come with increased consumption and the awareness to consume more fish due to its nutritional and health related benefits. At the same time, the consumption has met increased environmental concerns from both fisheries and aquaculture related activities. This has propelled the need for sustainable production and consumption; thus, in the sense of ecolabeled products. The thesis sets out to examine the market conditions for sustainable seafood products and market interactions in the seafood value chain. The thesis empirically contributes with chapters 2, 3 and 4 which are respectively composed of three, two and one individual papers.
Chapter 2 examines the Danish sustainable seafood market based on revealed preference data and show that consumers of salmon recognize and value organic produced products. They are willing to pay organic price premium of approximately 20 percent which could compensate producers. This is important given the possible change in cost structure following the 2016 full implementation of the organic production cycle in Europe. Moreover, this chapter shows that consumer preference for sustainable salmon products are complicated by the origin of the seafood product; being farmed or wild-caught. Organic produced salmonids markets in Denmark are partially integrated with the conventional market. The conventional market however, determines the market price for organic products. The long run relationships in this market signal that the price gap between the conventional and organic products would be expected to be reduced with increased organic market share.
Chapter 3 examines German consumers’ preference using hypothetical data. The chapter shows that organic rainbow trout production information related to animal welfare issues positively influence consumers’ marginal utilities, environmental issues do not significantly differ from the status quo market without any information treatment. Combining both on the other hand, seems to overwhelm consumers. Consumer preferences for fish products produced from insect-based protein sources does not significantly affect majority of the consumers choices, which may allow the scarce standard feed substitution and lessen pressure on fishery resources.
In chapter 4, price changes along the value chain for selected seafood products including salmon, cod and Alaska pollock are examined. The evidence reveals that, the nature of the transmission process is retail chain and product dependent, with the retail sector being mostly exogenous. However, in most cases adjustment to the new equilibrium is asymmetric. Implications are discussed in the respective studies.