Aquaculture: How German Preservice Teachers’ Perception Interacts with Values, Knowledge, and Conceptions of Environmental Concern When Making Purchasing Decisions

Abstract

Responsibly using resources is an essential goal of the 2030 agenda. An overall need for 180 tonnes of fish per year is pushing the limits of sustainable fishing. Teachers can focus on this topic to enhance the environmental awareness of sustainability issues in learners (e.g., sustainable consumption, production, and supporting sustainable judgements). For this purpose, we developed a questionnaire on the topic of aquaculture using LimeSurvey and administered this survey to preservice teachers. The survey contained five open questions relating to aquaculture terms, a semantic differential with 14 adjective pairs that concern the interest in and usefulness of aquacultures; the environmental motives scale to determine the environmental concern of the teachers, and a self-developed set of items on systems—consumption knowledge, and social influence. Individuals in the target group (n = 158) indicated that they thought aquaculture products were rather useless and uninteresting, and they purchased them less. The results showed that the participants mostly correctly defined the aquaculture terms, but an overall understanding of system- and consumption-related knowledge, for example, was missing. Aquaculture seems to be associated more with profit than with nutrition or environmental concerns. We illustrate a possible barrier to the communication of less-familiar issues in society.