Culinary Students’ Awareness, Perceptions and Attitudes Towards Farmed Versus Wild Fish

Abstract

The issue of seafood sustainability has come to the fore as a critical concern within the domain of food systems. This issue is of pertinence to culinary professionals, who wield a significant influence on consumer habits and the composition of menus. However, there is a paucity of research that has examined how future chefs, as gastronomy students, perceive farmed versus wild fish in terms of health, ethics, and sustainability. The present study investigates the attitudes of gastronomy and culinary arts students (N=399) toward fish sourcing practices for the purpose of identifying perception structures and preference patterns. A structured questionnaire was administered, and the resulting data were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and Wilcoxon signed-rank tests. The EFA identified three primary components: sustainability and ethics, subjective knowledge, and students' involvement, with 71.5% of the total explained variance. The factors exhibited substantial internal consistency, as evidenced by Cronbach's alpha (>0.83), composite reliability (>0.88), and its average variance extracted (AVE) (>0.65). While students demonstrated a high level of concern for environmental practices and fish welfare, their subjective knowledge regarding the evaluation and purchase of fish remained limited. Paired comparison using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test revealed statistically significant preferences for wild fish across multiple attributes, including healthiness, nutritional value, ethical production, availability, and safety (p <0.001), with effect sizes ranging from moderate to large (r = 0.254–0.534). These findings suggest the presence of a value–knowledge gap, wherein students are ethically engaged yet informationally underprepared to evaluate aquaculture products. These findings underscore the necessity for targeted educational innovations within culinary programs to enhance students' aquaculture literacy, critical evaluation skills, and sustainable sourcing competence. As future professionals who influence consumer preferences and industry practices, culinary students require a more balanced understanding of seafood systems.