Seafood Safety Perceptions and Their Effects on Anticipated Consumption under Varying Information Treatments

This paper identifies factors that influence consumers' seafood safety perceptions and examines how these perceptions affect consumers' anticipated consumption when consumers are provided with additional information relevant to seafood. A recursive system of equations is specified describing consumers' safety perceptions as a function of past experience with seafood, recreational harvest activities, and risk-taking behavior, and describing the influence of safety perceptions on consumers' anticipated demand response to hypothetical information concerning seafood. A telephone survey of randomly selected Rhode Island consumers provided data for the analysis.