Fish eaters or alternative consumers? The multiple ways of joining Community-Supported Fishery schemes.

Résumé En

This communication looks at the social and economic factors inducing fish consumers to join a Community Supported Fishery (CSF) scheme created by small-scale fishers on a French small island. An original in-depth survey of 556 consumers representing approximately one third of the CSF membership has been recently undertaken. A factor analysis of the data set reveals the existence of two structuring pillars: the first one relates to the fish product and fishing characteristics, and the second one refers to the consumption experiment and social interactions. In our model specification, we include social characteristics (age, gender, family size…) and behavioral variables (single buyer or shared box, purchase from other marketing channels, etc.) to disentangle the underpinning motivations of CSF seafood consumers. In particular, we show that CSF is the unique supply source of consumers who prioritize relational experiments, whereas those who first consider product and process characteristics may use diversified sources such as multiple grocers, fishmongers or street markets. Lessons can be drawn out of the results to better understand the consumers' incentives to join CSF and see whether this type of consumption can be extended or not by small-scale fishers.