Speaker
Description
An often overlooked negative externality of aquaculture relates to the impact of fish escapees on wild populations. Following an escape, fish bought as wild could de facto be an escapee. This paper investigates how this risk affects consumer welfare testing the presence of preferences reflecting prospect theory and endowment effects.
We implement a pre-registered between subject experiment applying contingent valuation to elicit WTP for a fish that is guaranteed as wild and WTA to accept the risk of the fish that is purchased as wild could come from an escape. The experiment was implemented online with 1000 fish consumers in two coastal regions located in South Eastern Spain. Both the total sample and the two sub-groups are representative of the target population.
Our results show a significant difference between both approaches. First, the share of individuals accepting the valuation scenario was much higher in the WTP setting than in the WTA. While 46.3% of the sample declared a positive WTP for guaranteeing that the fish was indeed wild, more than 70% was willing to assume the risk if the price was lower. Second the values obtained are significantly higher when asking for WTA than when asking for WTP (WTP = 1.4 Euros per fish; WTA = 5.7 Euro per fish).
| Status of your work | First results |
|---|---|
| Early Career Researcher Award | No, the paper is not eligible |
