Price-Effect Analysis Of Demand For Meat And Fish Amongst Rural Households In South-Eastern Nigeria

Model builders and policy analysts have relied on their subjective price-effect estimation on fish and other meat components in consumer diet with the result that their analyses do not exactly and reliably reflect the reality. This study provides empirical price-effect analysis of the demand for meat- and fish-consuming rural households in South-eastern Nigeria. Data collected from 590 rural household consumers of meat and fish were analyzed using the Linear Approximate Almost Ideal Demand System (LA/AIDS) and the Slusky decomposition. The results showed that meat and fish consumers exhibit some inconsistent behaviour in expenditure, and expend the highest proportion of their conditional income on chicken with mo relationship in commodities demand by price of fish. Fish and other meat components are necessities with only chicken as a luxury commodity in the region. Although, the unobservable own-price effect components of the total price-change show that there is likely no preference ordering that can rationalize observed meat and fish consumer demand behaviour in the region, the consumers are consistent in their choice among the different commodities. The compensated demand curve for the commodities, except for chicken is downward-sloping, while the unobservable own-price effect of fish and meat are higher than their income effect. Only the income-effect on meat and fish consumption in the region was higher than the substitution effect for chicken meat in relation to fish and other components of meat. Therefore, price-oriented policies interventions rather than income-oriented policies would be a more effective tool to combat animal protein-deficient nutrition in the basic diet of consumers in the region.