Sustainability is in the details: empowering seafood consumers with informative labels

Much of the current practice in promoting seafood sustainability relies on providing ecolabels that act as proxies for consumers to let them know that a given product is sustainably sourced. However, this approach does not empower consumers to judge for themselves whether a product is sustainable, which is especially important given the diversity of seafood products and the diversity of personal definitions of sustainability (e.g., a proxy label may not be based on information that a given person cares about). Moreover, proxy labels are provided by many different non-governmental certification organizations with various criteria that are not made fully transparent to consumers, creating a patchwork of labels that confuses rather than empowers. Informative, detailed labels that provide specific sustainability information about a product and that are implemented through a standardized process (i.e., through policy-based mandatory labelling requirements) may provide several advantages to the consumer. However, consumers may prefer proxy labels for their convenience, despite their deficiencies relative to informative labels. Here, we adopt an exploratory approach and evaluate consumer attitudes and behavioral intentions regarding proxy labels versus informative labels. As an initial comparative test of these labels, we utilized an experimental vignette approach and collected data from 90 participants who were interested in general sustainability topics, measuring attitudinal reactions to either a proxy label or an informative label for different seafood products. The results of our experiment show that participants interested in sustainability generally prefer the proxy label to the informative label, although evaluations were high in both regards. Moreover, several sources of descriptive and qualitative data demonstrate that participants were interested in many different pieces of information in evaluating sustainability of a seafood product. We discuss implications of our findings and recommend future research directions to continue to stimulate discussions on this topic.