Potentials and limits of sustainability communication - The cases of climate-friendly food and farmed fish

The present thesis focuses on the potentials and limits of sustainability communication via media, labels and claims to foster the consumption of climate-friendly food and sustainably farmed fish. A mixed methods approach combining an online survey containing choice experiments with qualitative face-to-face interviews was applied to explore consumers’ perceptions of climate-friendly food as well as the limits and merits of a carbon footprint label for fostering climate-friendly consumption. The qualitative approach of focus groups was used to reveal German consumers’ perception of sustainable aquaculture and about related sustainability communication instruments (labels and claims). Quantitative and qualitative content analysis was conducted to analyze the media coverage of aquaculture. Main results are that the presence of a carbon label increases the purchase probability and that consumers are willing to pay a price premium for a product showing a carbon label in all countries under investigation. But the contribution of a carbon label to a more climate-friendly consumption might be limited since consumers are frequently overstrained with climate-friendly buying decisions. Further the thesis shows that consumers, even though they have frequently little knowledge of aquaculture, often have a limited need for information about aquaculture. Consumers are mostly unfamiliar with existing labeling schemes and perceive the presented communication messages as too vague and/or too complex. They want to rely on the aquaculture industry to comply with sustainability standards. Also the thesis highlights that the media can take over an important role as intermediary translating the complex issues related to aquaculture for their readership. The study shows that the media primarily reports on aquaculture in a positive to neutral tone. Economic benefits of aquaculture dominate the coverage, whereas potential negative aspects of aquaculture receive less attention. In sum, the results reveal that media, labels and claims are important instruments for creating awareness about sustainability in food and for enabling consumers to act. But these different communication instruments have limits in fostering sustainable food consumption. A limitation of sustainability communication via media is that negative information is more probable to be retained by readers than outbalanced and positive information. An important limitation of sustainability labels and claims is that consumers frequently feel overstrained by the information offer about products and by making complex trade-off decisions between sustainability attributes. With respect to the found potentials and limits of sustainability communication as an empowering strategy the thesis stresses that governments and the retail also have to take up responsibility for sustainable development.