Social license and consumer perceptions of farm-raised fish

Abstract

This study uses personal predispositions, attitudes towards food industry actors, media use and food consciousness as variables to explore trust in farm-raised and the degree to which respondents believe that aquaculture benefits their home state. The authors use a random sample mail survey of primary food shoppers in Wisconsin, a state in the Great Lakes region of the United States, where aquaculture is considered an emerging industry and fish sold for food are generally raised in manmade ponds or flow-through raceways. They find that trust in government agencies, grocery stores, food manufacturers/processors, perceived industry environmentalism and attention environmental news, were positively related to both trust in fish farmers and perceptions that benefits from fish farming accrue within the state. Although attention to environmental news and conservative ideology were positively related to trust in fish farmers, and a preference for GMO-free/organic foods was negatively related to the same, none of these three variables had a relationship to the perception that fish farming benefits the respondents' state. Implications are discussed.