New research shows that retailers in the UK are achieving a price premium of more than 14 percent, and obtaining higher sales, for products bearing the Marine Stewardship Council eco-label.
The study, published in the Journal of Agricultural Economics, is the first to show not only what factors make it more likely for consumers to buy eco-labeled seafood products but evidence that consumers value the positive environmental attributes of MSC-labeled products highly enough to pay a premium for them.
The study examined scanner data for sales of 24 frozen pollock products in a selection of London metropolitan area supermarkets over a period of 65 weeks from 2007 to 2008. Twelve of those products displayed the MSC label. After adjusting for differences arising from other product attributes such as branding, product form and size, the study identified a price difference of 14.2 percent between MSC products and non-labeled pollock products.
Sales of the MSC products were also high, at 3.3 million units, during the period, more than non-labeled products at 3.03 million units.
Alaska pollock products in the UK made the ideal starting point to evaluate the market benefits of fisheries certification due to UK-based seafood processors and retailers being early adopters of sustainable seafood sourcing policies, UK consumers having a relatively good chance of being familiar with the MSC label and the Alaska pollock fisheries being certified relatively early on in the MSC program.
“The success of such programs depends upon enough well-managed fisheries becoming and remaining certified to supply the market; and upon creating incentives for less well-managed fisheries to improve to the point where they can also be certified sustainable. Market benefits – such as price premiums – are necessary for ecolabeling programs to influence production and management practices in industry. For suppliers, price premiums are a direct means by which to offset the costs incurred from taking part in certification programs, and are more directly measurable than other market benefits such as improved market access,” said study author Cathy Roheim.
“Obviously, this is only the first of further needed market analyses to address the existence and size of a premium for other markets, beyond the UK, supplied with Alaska pollock. We need to find out whether the premium makes it from retail level to production level, to directly compensate fishers, and whether the premium is sufficient to cover the costs of a sustainable fishery and certification.”
