BOILED CRAWFISH CONSUMPTION IN LOUISIANA

Abstract

Louisiana leads the world in acreage devoted Data And Logit Model to the production of crawfish. However, other countries, specifically China, have increased During the spring of 1994, 3,000 households crawfish production more than Louisiana. Louisiin four rural and four urban parishes of Louisiana ana crawfish are sold internationally, particularly were surveyed to identify their crawfish and seain Europe and Asia. Even with increased exports, food consumption patterns. The four urban par70 percent of the state's crawfish crop is conishes included Ascension, Lafayette, Ouachita sumed instate. The major crawfish products are and Rapides. Bienville, Caldwell, Iberville and La tail meat and boiled crawfish. Salle were the four rural parishes. The names and This paper examines the consumption of addresses of household's were obtained from the boiled crawfish in Louisiana based on a mail surLouisiana Department of Public Safety (vehicle vey of households. The first section presents preregistration division). A total of 858 useable obvious research results concerning crawfish conservations were obtained from the initial and folsumption. The second section provides an overlow-up mailings (28.6%). The survey requested view of the data and a logit model that is used to estimates of seafood consumption by species and estimate the probability of a household consumwhether the household had purchased, caught or ing boiled crawfish. The third section presents the received the seafood as a gift. The focus of this results of this analysis and the fourth section paper is on crawfish obtained and consumed by contains the conclusions and implications. the household in boiled form. Of the 858 useable observations, 203 housePrevious Research holds reported consuming a total of 2,913.72 pounds of boiled crawfish. Average boiled crawBebee (1987) surveyed 5,000 households in fish consumption per household was 14.35 Louisiana to ascertain their crawfish consumption pounds over the five-day survey period. The patterns. He found that as income increased the range of boiled crawfish consumption was 0.25 to probability of consumption of crawfish decreased. 50 pounds. While the survey was taken during the He also found that households with a Catholic harvest period for crawfish, less than one fourth religious preference were more likely to consume of the responding households had consumed crawfish than non-Catholics. boiled crawfish in the five days preceding the Periera (1989) examined crawfish consumpsurvey. tion nationally. She found that consumers in the Households are routinely faced with deciSouthern region of the United States were more sions to consume or to forego consumption of likely to consume crawfish than consumers in specific items. In this study, households were other areas and that the Pacific region was the asked if they had consumed boiled crawfish. second most likely area to consume crawfish. Logit analysis was used as the statistical techDellenbarger and Schupp (1991) found that nique. Logit analysis operates as a binary choice budget constraints did not influence crawfish conmodel. The number one was assigned to housesumption in Louisiana. Cultural beliefs, moreoholds consuming boiled crawfish and a zero to ver, were a factor in the consumption of crawfish. households not consuming boiled crawfish. The definition of variables used in the logit model are given in Table 1 and the descriptive statistics are