Demand for fish in Great Britain is driven by household income and taste.

Abstract

Objective: Fish is high in nutrients that provide a range of health benefits, but people in Great Britain only consume around half the amount that is recommended. This study analysed the demand for fish for consumption at home across different household groups in Great Britain.

Design: Using a Rotterdam demand model, price and income elasticities were estimated for eleven fish groups across seven household groups. To investigate changes in fish demand, we decomposed growth in fish demand into income, relative price and change in taste and seasonality.

Setting: The data used for our analysis were drawn from the Kantar Worldpanel dataset for Great Britain for the period from 2013 to 2021.

Participants: 12 492 households in Great Britain.

Results: Families with children consistently allocated a lower share of their grocery spending on fish and preferred to purchase ready-to-use and convenient fish products, compared with households without children. Purchases of chilled fresh/smoked oily fish, canned oily fish and frozen processed fish led spending across demographic groups, whilst purchases of canned oily fish showed minimal growth. The demand for most fish products across household groups was price inelastic, indicating that the percentage change in the quantity of fish demanded increased or fell by less than the percentage change in price.

Conclusions: Income and taste were identified as significant determinants of demand changes across all household groups, while price only played a prominent role in demand changes for certain fish groups. Thus, increasing fish consumption, especially in lower-income groups, who do not usually consume much fish, may require a different intervention than simply making fish more affordable.