Do Seafood Consumers Value Locally Caught Fish?

Suggested Bibliographic Reference: Challenging New Frontiers in the Global Seafood Sector: Proceedings of the Eighteenth Biennial Conference of the International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade, July 11-15, 2016. Compiled by Stefani J. Evers and Ann L. Shriver. International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade (IIFET), Corvallis, 2016.Proceedings of the Eighteenth Biennial Conference of the International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade, held July 11-15, 2016 at Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Center (AECC), Aberdeen, Scotland, UK.Fisheries in Queensland, and elsewhere, are coming under increased pressure from other potential resource users for access to the resources. These include the fish resource itself (i.e. by recreational fishers), as well as encroachment on the area of the fishery through conservation based closures and onshore activities (e.g. port development) that impact where vessels may operate (and potentially the resource itself). Quantifying the potential impact of changes in fishing activity is essential to ensure that resources are used most effectively, and that all costs of alternative resource uses are taken into consideration in decision making. One such impact that fishers claim is often overlooked is the loss of benefits to the local community from the reduced supply of fresh fish. This presumes that local consumers gain benefits from access to local fish compared to fish from outside the region. In this paper, we test this assumption through the application of a choice experiment. We find that respondents were willing to pay a premium of around 5% for locally caught fish compared to fish caught elsewhere in Queensland, and an 11% premium compared with fish caught elsewhere in Australia