Fishing or Aquaculture? Chinese Consumers’ Stated Preference for the Growing Environment of Salmon through a Choice Experiment and the Consequentiality Effect

Abstract

Because of economic development and food safety concerns, an increasing number of middle-class consumers in China are demanding higher-quality food and more environmentally friendly food production methods. In this paper, we design a choice experiment to assess Chinese consumers’ preference for high-quality imported salmon through their willingness to pay (WTP) for various product attributes, especially the production environment attribute. We included a policy consequentiality script at the beginning of the survey and a consequentiality perception check at the end to test the effect of the device on Chinese consumers’ survey responses. The results show that Chinese consumers value the safety certification label of salmon with the highest premium, followed by chilled, wild-caught, and dark red color attributes of salmon. The WTP premiums from the consumers who were provided with the consequentiality script are significantly lower than those from consumers not provided with such a script, and the consequentiality perceptions are also enhanced by the script treatment.