Petrontino A et al. (2023), Seafood Choice and Consumption Behavior: Assess...

ECB-ART-51659

Foods 2023 Jan 16;122:. doi: 10.3390/foods12020418.

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Seafood Choice and Consumption Behavior: Assessing the Willingness to Pay for an Edible Sea Urchin.

Petrontino A , Madau F , Frem M , Fucilli V , Bianchi R , Campobasso AA , Pulina P , Bozzo F .

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Consumers' behavior towards sea urchin and preferences towards their origin certification and place of consumption may condition their market. In this context, the aim of this research was to elicit the preferences and perceptions of Italian sea urchin dishes using a discrete choice experiment (DCE) approach. A field survey of 453 respondents in Apulia (southern Italy) was conducted for this purpose. The DCE revealed that the origin certification of sea urchin provided Apulia's consumers a high utility with a great pleasurable service in restaurants in which this species was served as a principal dish or seasoned with pasta or pizza. The DCE also showed that the consumption utility of sea urchin was related to a greater influence by place of purchase, place of consumption, technique of conservation, appearance, quality label, fishing zone, low price, male buyer, and, finally, medium and high incomes. Furthermore, Apulian consumers were willing to pay EUR 10.53/dish as an overall average for safe and certified sea urchin consumption. Given this, this research may promote the creation of a local sea urchin brand through the adoption of a market policy and a particular regulation related to the certification of origin, enhancing the competitiveness of this marine heritage species.

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References [+] :

Aschemann-Witzel, Effects of nutrition label format and product assortment on the healthfulness of food choice. 2013, Pubmed

	Figure 1. The European geographic location of the study area—Apulia region (southern Italy). Source: our elaboration.
	Figure 2. Photos of sea urchin from the Apulia region (southern Italy). Paracentrotus lividus (a) is also commonly referred to as the “edible female hedgehog”. The “male” or “black” hedgehogs (b) are none other than species of Arbacia Lixula. In Puglia, although the same applies to many other Mediterranean countries and to the parts of Spain and France bordering the Atlantic, the hedgehog that is harvested and consumed is the Paracentrotus Lividus, otherwise called “purple hedgehog” for the widespread presence, in its populations, of specimens whose spines show, precisely, a color tending to violet. Source: photos provided by Meliadò Eleonora, 2021, project “TuGePlAl” funded by the Apulia region (Appendix A).
	Figure 3. Overview of the discrete choice experiment (DCE) approach. The diagram highlights the steps in each phase of the DCE that were considered in our study, in which steps 1 and 2 have already been described in Section 1.
	Figure 4. Apulian consumers’ willingness to pay for the consumption of sea urchin. ASC refers to alternative specific constant, which here represents the “none” option in each choice set.