Understanding British household demand for sustainable and nutrient dense seafood products

Recent research using extracted data on the UK Seafood Supply chain shows the top four combined sustainability and nutrient dense species of: herring, mackerel, salmon, and mussels, whilst, the 5 most consumed fish species (‘the big five’, e.g. cod, haddock, salmon, tuna and prawns, make up 80 percent of the fish and seafood consumed in the UK), are all import reliant. Rathnayaka et al (2025) found that demand for most seafood products was more dependent on income and change in tastes than price. The work on this paper extended the analysis of the demand for seafood products by considering: (1) different seafood classifications, (2) a different demand system, (3) use of 2024 cross sectional data and (4) estimating five demand systems based on the quintiles of household spending on food and drink products (a proxy for household income). This study applies an incomplete demand system modelling to understand British household demand for sustainable and nutrient dense seafood products with regards to the different household income groups. The Exact Affine Stone Index (EASI) demand system used cross sectional data and considering different socioeconomic groups (identified by income quintiles). The data consisted of 2024 Kantar Worldpanel data for Great Britain, considering 5 seafood groups. The estimated demand system was used to compute price and expenditure elasticities at household level. The main findings suggest that lower income households are more price sensitive relative to higher income households for canned oily fish and oil fish products. Therefore, a price-based policy for lower expenditure households with regards to canned oily and oily fish may be an effective way to encourage greater consumption of seafood products with potential beneficial health and sustainable benefits.