Consumers’ consciousness and willingness to pay for fishery products with ecolabels: an empirical study on university students in Italy

This research concerns ecolabels in the fishery sector and its main objectives are to verify: 1) whether they are recognized and their meaning is known by culturally qualified young consumers and 2) whether it is possible to quantify these consumers’ “willingness to pay” (WTP) for fish products bearing ecolabels. Literature review has shown that even though over the years many studies on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) labelling were carried out, only few focused exclusively on the fishery sector, analysing the young consumers’ point of view. Following literature review, a questionnaire was designed. The measurement scale used in this study was adapted from scales validated in previous papers and double checked against field literature. The final part of this research investigates the sentiment of 411 students of the University of Turin (Italy), employing multivariate statistical methods. The results of this analysis point out that most of the investigated students (39.41%) on the one hand are very poorly informed about this topic but on the other hand have a medium WTP. Familiarity with ecolabels may improve consumers’ sustainability awareness, enabling purchasers to make informed choices. Ecolabels can also support the sea environment avoiding overfishing and the risk of depletion of certain fish stock.