Sustainable Seafood: The Confused Consumer

The economic, social and environmental benefits of doing business sustainably are now well established with many industries fully embracing and integrating sustainable practices. However, some industries are facing greater challenges and struggling to embrace sustainable practices. For example, within the seafood industry the issue of sustainability is highly topical with a 2014 Google search on the term ‘sustainable fish’ scoring over 37.4 million hits. Despite a groundswell of discussion and action within the seafood industry, the current literature on seafood sustainability remains emergent. While consumers are the stakeholder group that arguably has most potential interest, the actions of all other stakeholders within the industry affect choices available to them. Accordingly, this paper reviews the current literature and seeks to identify how each stakeholder defines and seeks to manage the issue of seafood sustainability. Several sources of confusion, ambiguity and conflict in the field including gaps in current research are evident. Consumers are either confused or ambivalent about sustainability with respect to seafood and there is a lack of consensus on what sustainability means across the seafood supply chain, with differing perspectives across the various stakeholders involved with the industry including governments, NGOs, the seafood industry itself (producers, processors, and distributors), and consumers. Following this review, results of an online survey of 1,258 Australian seafood consumers explore further understandings of sustainability in relation to seafood. This study provides an understanding of consumers and other stakeholder perspectives with respect to the sustainability of seafood and provides a basis for developing strategies to reduce ambiguity, promote clarity and shared understandings regarding sustainable seafood, while increasing knowledge, leading to more sustainably managed seafood supply chains