Effect of Fishery Information Provision on Sustainable Consumption

With the surge in global demand for seafood, although efforts are being made to guide fisheries and farmed aquaculture, which still rely on natural resources, toward sustainability, it is pertinent to guide people toward sustainable consumption patterns. We consider bluefin tuna, whose largest consumer is Japan and whose stock levels were at risk in the early 2010s, and examine whether consumers can be impelled to consume fish produced in a resource-conserving manner if they have adequate information on stock status and fishing methods. We explore the potential of fixed shore net fisheries and full-cycle aquaculture techniques, which have received limited attention in previous studies. Furthermore, we analyzed the effectiveness of ecolabels indicating that, in the case of natural products, no juvenile fish were caught, and in the case of farmed fish, no juveniles were used as seedlings or artificial seedlings were used. We conducted randomized controlled trial to analyze how information provision changes the marginal willingness to pay for fish commodity attributes. The analysis reveals that the information provision significantly and positively affects payments for bluefin tuna produced by resource-conserving fixed shore net fisheries and full-cycle aquaculture. Moreover, it significantly increases the premium for ecolabeling, suggesting the need to provide consumers with knowledge on resource status and fishing methods. However, as the effects of information provision are heterogeneous, new approaches such as consumer segmentation at the retail level are required to implement these efforts in society.