Consumer Concern for Ethical Issues in Fish Farming: A Segmentation Study

The main objective of this paper was to study consumer concern for ethical and environmental issues regarding fishing and aquaculture. Cross-sectional data was collected in Valencia, Spain. A total sample of 452 consumers was obtained. This study uses descriptive and multivariate techniques to present data, and to obtain and describe the segments. The analysis resulted in three segments: the unconcerned, the wild fish concerned and the ambivalent. These represented 27%, 35% and 39% of the sample respectively. The segments were profiled with variables age, gender, education, social class, fish consumption, attitudes towards fish, attitudes towards farmed fish, perceived knowledge about fish farming, health involvement and the type of information used when buying fish (product vs. environmental)