Sustainability Descriptive Labels on Farmed Salmon: Do Young Educated Consumers Like It More?

Despite the efforts to make fish sustainable, it is largely unknown if young educated consumers' taste of fish and their willingness to pay more for fish is influenced by positively framed messages regarding sustainable farming practices. This research investigated if a positively framed description of sustainable farming opposed to positively framed descriptions of flavour, health benefits, or socially responsible farming, influences young consumers' liking, and willingness to pay for farmed salmon. Young consumers of fish (n = 119) randomly tasted Fresh and hot Smoked salmon and rated their liking and willingness to pay more on structured line scales. The salmon were labelled with either a description of sustainable farming practices, flavour benefits, nutrition/health benefits, socially responsible farming practices, or no descriptions. Descriptive labelling about Sustainability (p = 0.04), Flavour (p = 0.01), and Health/nutrition (p = 0.01) significantly increased consumers' liking of Fresh salmon compared to Fresh salmon without labelling. No such a difference was found between the social responsibility label and the sample without labels (p = 0.2). Participants were willing to pay more for 250 g of Fresh and Smoked Salmon with descriptive labels (Fresh: $9.3 +/- $0.003; Smoked: $10.1 +/- $0.003), than for the same Salmon without such labels (Fresh: $9.0 +/- $0.06; Smoked: $9.8 +/- $0.08) (p < 0.001). The sustainability descriptive label had no added benefit above other descriptive labels. The liking and buying intent were, for all labels and fish types, strongly correlated (r = 0.80, p < 0.001). In conclusion, sustainability labelling is promising, but does not differentiate from other positively framed messages.