The effect of sustainability labels on farmed-shrimp preferences: Insights from a discrete choice experiment in Vietnam

Abstract

This study investigates the effectiveness of sustainability labels, environmental attitudes, food safety concerns, and knowledge on Vietnamese consumer preferences for sustainably farmed shrimp. Mixed logit and latent class models were applied to estimate utility functions based on 459 samples collected using a choice experiment. The results indicate that Vietnamese consumers prefer sustainably farmed shrimp to conventionally farmed shrimp. Also, both food safety concerns and consumer knowledge vigorously promote sustainably farmed shrimp choices. Notably, the latent class results show that 73.5% of the respondents consider their environmental concerns about shrimp production when making decisions about consumption. The results indicate that placing information related to eco-friendly and food safety attributes on sustainability labels provides Vietnamese consumers with additional choices in the form of sustainably farmed shrimp. Finally, the simulated MXL results in the WTP space are more significant than those in the preference space, indicating that it is necessary to estimate the MXL in the WTP space to avoid specifying the parameter distribution subjectively by analysts.

Keywords:

• Sustainability labels
• environmental attitudes
• shrimp
• discrete choice experiment
• mixed logit model
• latent class model

Acknowledgments

The authors extend their gratitude to Dr. Bui Bich Xuan at Nha Trang University for suggesting the research idea and critical comments on the manuscript.

Author contributions

TNP and NTH contributed to the study’s conception. TNP collected data and processed the data. TNP and VTT worked on methodology, formal analysis, and prepared the draft manuscript. VTT approved the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The datasets used and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Vietnam National Foundation for Science and Technology Development (NAFOSTED) under [Grant 502.99–2018.25]. This research is partly funded by University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.