What drives a country’s fish consumption? Market growth phase and the causal relations among fish consumption, production and income growth

Abstract

We investigate the main drivers of fish consumption growth in 96 countries over the past 50 years. We categorize the world market for fish consumption into four growth phases: Introduction, Growth, Maturity and Decline. Each country’s fish consumption is estimated using the growth curve model, clustered by dynamic time warping (DTW) together with those countries sharing similar characteristics. Analyzing the relations among the annual growth rates of fish consumption, production and real GDP using a panel vector autoregressive model (PVAR), we find that the main drivers of fish consumption growth vary across the growth phases. In the introduction phase, fish consumption growth is mainly driven by the growth of RGDP. In the growth phase, RGDP and fish production growth become the main drivers, while in the maturity phase, these drivers do not play a significant role despite their positive coefficients. However, in the decline phase, fish production growth generates a significantly negative impact on fish consumption growth. Identifying fish consumption market growth phase for policymakers would be the first step toward devising the right policy tools before prioritizing fish consumption management strategies.