This study investigates wehther customers are willing to pay for improvements in environmental sustainability of the seafood they purchase. The researchers use a retail product level scanner dataset of seafood purchased before and after the implementation of a non-profit third-party seafood advisory label system to estimate a demand model. The advisory informs consumers about the relative sustainability of each seafood product based on the seafood species, catch method, production method, environmental contamination, and country of origin.
The Sea Grant award supported a Ph.D. student trainee for one summer. The Sea Grant award provided the student trainee with an opportunity to gain experience conducting an empirical analysis on proprietary data in the area of marine resource economics as part of a team of three economists, representing a collaboration between UC Berkeley, NOAA, and The Nature Conservancy.
