Consumer willingness to pay for non-mandatory indication of the fish catch zone.

The European mandatory labeling system for fishery products excludes the indication of the catch or production origin for fish‐based processed food. However, while producers can voluntarily indicate this information on labels, they incur extra production costs for following procedures for tracing and guaranteeing the origin of their ingredients. Our study investigates whether consumers can be attracted by a marketing strategy based on transparency and traceability. We applied a dichotomous choice contingent valuation method on a sample of 250 Italian consumers. Findings indicate that consumers are willing to pay an average premium price of 4.75% for knowing the catch zone of fish used as ingredients of fish‐based processed food (seafood salad or marinated anchovies in this study). The premium price is positively influenced by education and gender.