Master's Thesis in Fisheries and Aquaculture Management and Economics

The value chain of white leg shrimp exported to the U.S market in Khanh Hoa province, Vietnam

Bui Nguyen Phuc, Thien Chuong — Tue, 31 May 2011 22:00:00 GMT

Bui Nguyen Phuc, Thien Chuong
The research aimed to explore the value chain of frozen white leg shrimp exported to the U.S market from Khanh Hoa province, Vietnam. Three objectives were set up, that is, (1) to identify the activities conducted by different actors in the value chain and the corresponding costs and earnings of those activities, (2) to evaluate the distributions of revenue, cost and profit along the chain, and (3) to determine factors preventing shrimp farmers from dealing directly with processing firms. Research findings showed that before exported to the U.S market, white leg shrimp has to undergo farming, procurement, and processing. Shrimp farming basically comprises of such steps as pond cleaning, seed release, and caring. When shrimp attain harvestable size, middlemen come to perform the procurement which includes harvesting, preserving, and transporting. At the processing plants, shrimp are transformed into final products, packed, labeled preserved and stored waiting to be exported. During shrimp farming, farmers incur several costs like seed, feed, labor, and other miscellaneous expenses. At the procurement stage, addition to purchasing shrimp from farmers, middlemen have to add some other costs like transport, labor, ice, and other inputs to transfer shrimp to the next stage. At the processing stage, direct material, direct labor, overhead, and other costs are added in accordance with the accounting format. Farmers, middlemen and processors experience positive profit in the 2008-2010 period. Based on costs and earnings data, some calculations were made which revealed the distributions of revenue (export price), cost and profit of 1 kg frozen shrimp exported to the U.S market. Costs and profits distributions were in sync with expectations. The surveys revealed 3 reasons why farmers depend on middlemen to sell their harvest, that is, lack of facilities, delayed payment policy and risk aversion.

The role of perceived risk, knowledge, price and cost in explaining dry fish consumption in Bangladesh within the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB)

Siddique, Mohammad Abdul Momin — Tue, 31 May 2011 22:00:00 GMT

Siddique, Mohammad Abdul Momin
Dry fish is the low-cost dietary protein source in Bangladesh. As far the concern of the researcher, this study is the first of its kind to explore the dry fish consumption behaviour in Bangladesh. The general purpose of this study is to apply the general framework of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), explain attitudes, intention and dry fish consumption in Chittagong city and to extend the traditional TPB-model with some additional variables; perceived risk, knowledge, price and cost. The field experiments were performed in Chittagong city, Bangladesh with convenience sample of 208 respondents. The measurement scales used in this study were selected or adapted from previous studies. The study employs the methods of factor analysis, test of reliability, principal component analysis and multiple regression analysis to analyze the data. The findings showed that attitude, norms and procedural knowledge emerge as the key determinants of intention, while intention, attitude, norms and perceived risk effect on the consumption frequency. PBC, price and cost had no significant effect on intention and dry fish consumption. Perceived quality is found as the most important attribute to forming consumers’ attitude towards dry fish consumption. The proposed TPB and the extended model both of them fit well with the data and proved the expectations of this study in a promising way. The study found that people are more concerned about potential long-term risk to their family and others. Therefore, management attention should focus on reducing risks with which consumers may be faced through producing safe and hazard free dry fish. A communication strategy should focus much more on improving procedural knowledge and signing food safety for consumers with lower knowledge than the others. Key words: TPB, perceived risk, knowledge, price and cost, dry fish consumption, attitude and intention, Bangladesh.

Explaining fish consumption in Sri-Lanka: The role of consideration set size, attitude, knowledge, convenience orientation, price consciousness, and variety seeking tendency

Pethiyagoda, Niyomi Ayesha — Sun, 15 May 2011 22:00:00 GMT

Pethiyagoda, Niyomi Ayesha
The primary purpose of this study to understand how the consideration set size affect for consumption frequency of fish in Sri-Lanka. Consideration set size of fish is considered to be affected by consumer attitude, convenience orientation, and consumer knowledge in Sri-Lankan context. Thus, the second objective was to investigate how consumer attitude, knowledge, convenience orientation, variety seeking tendency and price consciousness affect the formation of consideration set size. Based on that, it aimed to suggest a marketing strategy implication for food marketers, in addition with strategy implication for increasing fish consumption. The proposed conceptual frame work was used to achieve the objectives in this study. Thus, the proposed model consisted with the constructs of attitude, knowledge, convenience orientation, variety seeking tendency and price consciousness. This thesis was an extension of Rortveit and Olsen (2007: 2009) study with the inclusion of additional antecedents of variety seeking tendency and price consciousness. The questionnaire survey was carried out in Galle district in Sri-Lanka with the convenience sample of 250 respondents. The measurement scales used here were adopted from previous studies found in literature. The confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling in Amos 16.0 were used as statistical analysis tool. It was found that significant positive relationship between consideration set size and fish consumption frequency as a main hypothesis. Further, this study has found significant positive relationships between knowledge and consideration set size, between variety seeking related to personality and variety seeking related to food and between convenience orientation and consideration set size, while having insignificant relationships between knowledge and fish consumption frequency, and between variety seeking related to food and consideration set size. Surprisingly, attitude has an insignificant effect on both consideration set size and the consumption frequency of food. The main reason for this problem is skewneess of the data set. The study found that that belief of sensory aspects, health and convenience were significant predictors of attitude toward fish. Further this study revealed that price consciousness related to food has a negative significant impact on consideration set size. These findings indicated that from a marketing point of view, being chosen is effected by the size of the consideration set size, food marketers should advocate that consumers consider many kind of fish products in choice occasion. As shown by the study, set size can be increased through the consumer knowledge variable. In such a condition, manufacturer must tend to put in to consumer education which will lead to have a positive impact on consideration set size. From the theoretical point of view, this research contributed to fill the gap in the consumer consideration literature in general, but also to the literature trying to explain fish consumption in Sri-Lanka. A limitation of this study is that the relationship between the consideration set size and the consumption was only tested for the size dimension of the consideration set. Further more, sample is relatively small and they are not statistically representative to the total population in Galle district or Sri-Lanka. Therefore, the results could not be generalized to Sri-Lanka. Keywords: Consideration set size, attitude, convenience orientation, knowledge, and variety seeking tendency and price consciousness, fish consumption, Sri-Lanka.

Harvest production and economic efficiency of Bangladeshi industrial trawlers in the bay of Bengal

Siddique, Abu Baker — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 22:00:00 GMT

Siddique, Abu Baker
Since the 1990’s development of industrial trawl fisheries of Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh has attracted due to its high demand and abundance of fish and shrimp resources. This paper investigates Bangladeshi industrial trawl fishery by employing a bioeconomic model and an input-oriented Data Envelopment Analysis. The fundamental objective of this paper is to provide the technique through which long run sustainability can reach an optimum utilization of the resource efficiently to protect marine biodiversity and regenerate fish stocks. For this purpose, a conventional economic model is used simultaneously with a biological population growth model to develop a bioeconomic model. In order to achieve optimal steady state solutions, i.e., optimum levels of stock, harvest and effort are determined and efficiency is compared for five years. This study demonstrates that engine power, and fishing experience strongly affect technical efficiency. Results show that the Bangladesh trawl fishery is not managed and operated optimally and efficiently. Present situation of high effort level, less harvest amount and less fish stock signifies that the danger of depletion of the resource cannot be excluded . Finally, the study will propose some fishery strategies for Bangladesh, such as banning the inefficient trawlers to protect the resource.

Measuring capacity and capacity utilization in small-scale fisheries in Nha Trang

Tang, Thi Hien — Sat, 14 May 2011 22:00:00 GMT

Tang, Thi Hien
To develop effective capacity management programs, it is significant to evaluate and control the fishing capacity and its utilization in order to reduce overcapacity and excess capacity and create a stable development of marine resources. This study estimate fishing capacity and capacity utilization (CU) for the multi-species small- scale trawlers in Nha Trang, Vietnam. Data were collected through a survey of 65 small-scale trawler owners in two years 2005 and 2006. Using a mathematical programming approach - data envelopment analysis (DEA), the results from this study show that most of vessels in Nha Trang were operating at less than their full capacity and there was excess capacity in the trawl fleet. Based on these findings, some policy implications for trawl fishery management in Nha Trang are also provided and discussed. .

Explaining tourists satisfaction and intention to revisit Nha Trang, Viet Nam

Tran, Thi Ai Cam — Sat, 14 May 2011 22:00:00 GMT

Tran, Thi Ai Cam
The first purpose of the thesis is to find how visitors evaluate the quality of different facets or attributes of a destination image of Nha Trang, how satisfied they are with Nha Trang, loyalty intention to revisit and willingness to recommend Nha Trang to others. The second is to investigate what “image” is most important to explain global satisfaction with visiting Nha Trang. The third is to investigate how perceived quality, satisfaction and other motivational or dismotivational factors (e.g., demographic characteristics, variety seeking) influence loyalty intention to revisit and willingness to recommend to others. The survey was conducted in Nha Trang, Vietnam, with sample of 201 respondents. This study found that local food, environment and culture & social factors are attractive to tourists while tourist leisure & entertainment and infrastructure & accessibilty factors are not attractive to them. Tourists felt satisfied with visiting Nha Trang, they have intented to recommed higher than to revisit. Moreover, the study found that perceived quality and variety seeking are significant and positive related to satisfaction, age had a negative influence on satisfaction and intention to revisit, and satisfaction is significant and positive related to intention to revisit and recommendation.

The role of variety seeking in consumers’ fish consumption: a study in Sri Lanka

Salpage, Nesha Dushani — Sun, 15 May 2011 22:00:00 GMT

Salpage, Nesha Dushani
The primary purpose of this study was to explore the role of variety seeking behaviour towards fish consumption frequency. Second, it aimed to investigate how personality related factors; variety seeking tendency (related to food and personality) and perceived behavioural control affect the nature of variety seeking behaviour. Third, to investigate how product and motivational related factors; attitudes, health involvement and perceived risk affect the nature of variety seeking behaviour and fish consumption in the Sri Lankan context. In line with Hoyer and Ridgway (1984) proposed framework, a conceptual framework was developed with the constructs of variety seeking behaviour, variety seeking tendency (related to food and personality), perceived behavioural control, attitudes, health involvement, perceived risk and fish consumption frequency to achieve the objectives. A questionnaire survey was conducted using a convenience sample of 250 consumers in Galle in Sri Lanka. The items used to measure the constructs were either taken or adopted from the previous research studies. Confirmatory factor analysis and Structural Equation Modeling in AMOS 16.0 were employed to analysis the data. This study found that variety seeking behaviour plays a vital role in fish consumption frequency among consumers. The findings confirmed the theory that variety seeking tendency as a general personality trait positively influences the variety seeking tendency related to food (VST Food) while specific VST Food showing a significant effect on fish consumption frequency. Health involvement was found to be positively significant with fish consumption frequency as well as with the VST Food while having an insignificant relationship with the variety seeking behaviour. Conveneinec/ availability, price/ value and knowledge were not significant indicators of perceived control. Nevertheless, PBC and perceived risk act as a barrier for variety seeking behaviour. However, the effect of perceive risk on the fish consumption frequency was negligible. Surprisingly, attitudes did not have a significant impact on either fish consumption frquency or variety seeking behaviour. The main reason for this is probably skewness of the data set. Practical implications drawn from this research are that fish marketers should tap the consumers’s intrinsic desire for variation through providing different fish species in to the market place. Further, it is suggested that providing information on the most commonly eaten fish species by the government authorities through mass media will reduce the perceived risk and PBC associated with variation of fish and stimulate the health involvement towards variation of fish consumption. This research has contributed to fill the gap in variety seeking behaviour literature in which specifically incorporating effect of both personal related and product/ motivational related factors. This research was based on a convenience sample of consumers which did not represent the whole population, thus the results could not generalize to Sri Lanka. Future research should uncover additional individual and product related factors and their interactions which may relevant to explain variety seeking behaviour. Keywords: Variety seeking behaviour, variety seeking tendency, health involvement, PBC, attitudes, perceived risk, fish consumption frequency, Sri Lanka

Black tiger shrimp value chain analysis in Bac Lieu province, Vietnam

Doan, Van Bay — Sat, 14 May 2011 22:00:00 GMT

Doan, Van Bay
This research applied value chain analysis to represent activities of participants and their linkages in Black tiger shrimp culture industry in Hoa Binh district, Bac Lieu province, Vietnam. Actors involved in shrimp farming practice from farmers, collectors, wholesalers, feed and veterinary medicine enterprises, processors, to hatcheries, and nurseries were interviewed by separate questionnaires. A total sample size of 71 surveyed households were conducted and analyzed for this research. Results presented a map of actors, costs and margins, employment distribution, advantages and disadvantages of each level. Farmers, collectors, wholesalers and processing companies are four main actors which contributed directly to shrimp production and effected to the commercial value, and shrimp price. Hatcheries, nurseries, feed and veterinary medicines enterprises impacted indirectly to the economic efficiency and the value chain development orientation. Especially, small-scale farmers are the weakest and the most vulnerable actor in the value chain. The processing companies increase added value about 18%-26% and get the opportunities and benefits from trade better other actors. To upgrade this chain, shrimp farming clubs or farmers’ associations should be established in this district. They need to link to other actors with contract systems to meet the market demands and ensure sustainable development of shrimp industry.

Preference-based segmentation : a study of food category and meal preferences among Vietnamese teenagers

Vu, Thi Hoa — Mon, 17 May 2010 22:00:00 GMT

Vu, Thi Hoa
The purpose of this paper is to examine the applicability of preference-based segmentation for a broad array of meals and food categories in the context of teenagers in Vietnam. A convenience sample of 413 Vietnamese teenagers in secondary and high schools provided an evaluation on the preference of 30 items of food categories and 36 common meals was collected based on structured questionnaires and then used as inputs for the analyses. A five-cluster solution for the food category segmentation is defined: fish haters, eggs haters, shellfish haters, vegetables haters and food likers. Four distinct preference-based meal segments are also identified namely likers of all meals, haters of poultry meals, haters of seafood meals and haters of pork meals. The segments are profiled by means of food consumption, social and family related attitudes, interest and lifestyle and socio-demographic variables. The findings indicate that there are distinct and interesting differences between these segments. Thumbnail sketches of the teenager segments enable food producers and meal suppliers to make better and more informed decisions in terms of effectively targeting different market segments. . Keywords: Food preferences, segmentation, attitude, lifestyle, demographic, teenagers

Tourist motivation and activities : a case study of Nha Trang, Vietnam

Phan, Thi Kim Lien — Sun, 16 May 2010 22:00:00 GMT

Phan, Thi Kim Lien
The study investigates tourist’s motivation with a segmentation approach in order to give an understanding of the theory of motivation in general and the motivation factors influencing consumer decision making in a tourism context in particular. The segmentation based on motivation, which was supported by a factor-cluster analysis, was carried out on a primary survey of 446 international tourists visiting the city of Nha Trang, Vietnam in order to identify tourists segments. The research findings identified two tourist segments based on motivation, referred to as “Traditional Tourists” and “Nightlife and Positive Recommenders”, with social and intellectual motives found as the strongest motivations. There are significant differences found between the two segments in perceptions of activities, satisfaction, and intentions of revisitation and recommendation of the destination to others. The findings of the study indicate that the Nightlife and Positive Recommenders segment has trends higher than those of the Traditional Tourists segment in terms of all factors found, perceptions of activities, satisfaction, recommendation the destination to others and revisit intention. Based on the findings of the study, some policy recommendations are given to the local tourism marketers and managers in order to develop the local tourism industry appropriately.