Consumer Willingness to Pay for Sustainable Seafood: A Meta-analysis

With the fisheries industry having detrimental effects on the environment and society, sustainable seafood is becoming more important. Understanding consumer preferences is essential to establish and maintain sustainable seafood markets. Numerous worldwide studies have evaluated consumer Willingness to Pay (WTP) for sustainable seafood providing a variety of findings. This article attempts to incorporate these findings and analyze variations in consumer WTP for sustainable seafood consumption. Studies were initially identified through Google Scholar using a set of keywords. With a predetermined set of inclusion and exclusion criteria, 33 studies with 141 observations were selected for the analysis. A weighted ordinary least squares regression was used to analyze the data. When compared to the reference group of ‘other attributes’, the results of the meta-regression model reveal that consumers place higher price premiums for ‘organic’ and ‘local/domestic’ attributes. The ‘choice experiment/conjoint analysis’ and ‘contingent valuation’ methods elicited significantly higher WTP estimates in comparison to the reference group ‘other methods’. Additionally, WTP estimates from the ‘choice experiment/conjoint analysis’ was higher than the ‘contingent valuation’ method. Furthermore, ‘Europeans’ and ‘Americans’ displayed significantly lower price premiums compared to ‘Asians’. Publication in Journals also resulted in significant positive values compared to publishing in others. Thus, the findings show that consumer WTP varies for different sustainable seafood attributes. The estimation method, region and publication also cause differences in WTP. The findings provide important implications for seafood producers and policymakers when making decisions related to the sustainability of seafood and designing future research work.