Investigating the role of environmental messaging on Australia's attitudes and intentions towards cultivated seafood

<p dir="ltr">Our oceans are facing perilous times with climate change and other human impacts negatively altering marine ecosystems. A significant contributor is wild caught and farmed fishing practices which remove hundreds of millions of tonnes of marine biota annually and cause significant pollution; all to feed the increasing human population. Urgent action must be taken to reduce the effects of these impacts. Cultivated seafood is part of the cellular agriculture industry which is currently in the research and development phase to produce novel protein production methods. Cultivated seafood has the potential to significantly reduce wild-caught fish and bycatch numbers from our oceans, as well as reduce the need for aquaculture systems, which are both harmful to our oceans at current scale. Consumer perceptions of cultivated products will play a significant role in the acceptance of novel protein. I conduct the first investigation of consumer perceptions of cultivated seafood using a stratified sample of 1013 Australian consumers. A 2x3 factorial environmental messaging design was used to test participants' attitudes and intentions towards cultivated seafood. Environmental messaging outlined the impacts of wild-caught, farmed, and cultivated seafood production systems. We found that environmental messaging did not influence consumers attitudes and intentions towards cultivated seafood. However, it did have influence on attitudes and intentions to consume wild-caught seafood and farmed seafood. Factors such as nature relatedness, solidarity and seafood consumption were variables which were found to impact attitudes and intentions on cultivated seafood. This supports existing literature where comparisons of food production methods were found to contribute to consumer acceptance. Overall, this study provides a firm starting point for understanding consumer acceptance of cultivated seafood and adds valuable knowledge to consumer messaging theory.</p>