Yves Perraudeau

The demand for seafood eco-labels in France.

The French fishing industry has a long history and its seafood market a wide variety of products. Despite the worldwide growth in ecolabelling schemes over the past decade, the French industry has only very recently shown an interest in such schemes. Growing consumer and retailer awareness of environmental issues in France has changed the situation and it is now of interest to look at the demand for seafood ecolabelling in relation to the public perception of commercial fishing.We analyse, using an ordered Probit model, the factors influencing consumer demand for seafood ecolabelling on the basis of a French survey carried out on more than 1000 consumers. Our results show a significant relationship between the acceptability of ecolabelling and certain purchase criteria. The production process characteristics in (origin, wild vs. farmed, level of natural stocks) impact more strongly on the demand for ecolabelling than product attributes (form, visual appeal, freshness). Consumers are also influenced more by regulation than by information, inaccurate or otherwise, they may have about the fishing industry. Finally, our analysis confirms a higher demand for ecolabelling from young, educated consumers, particularly those living in non-coastal areas.

The potential use of derivatives to manage the price risk of seafood markets: the case of sole and cuttlefish in France

Taking into consideration the changes in the rules for the price support for agricultural and sea products, it seems appropriate to find out what other means could be used to cover the price risk in order to protect the commercial margin of these sectors of activity. The use of derivatives tools helps achieve this objective. We first emphasize the interest of such a study for fresh seafood markets and make a brief presentation of the various tools available to facilitate the understanding of future choices. Then we conduct a statistical analysis concerning the common sole and cuttlefish French markets which shows a good correlation level between sizes, presentations, qualities and the possibility to launch indices by species and OTC optional transactions on them. The last section brings into perspective the results and points out the various steps to take to make it functional.