The Influence of Sustainability on Identities and Seafood Consumption: Implications for Food Systems Education for Generation Z
Abstract
:1. Introduction
1.1. Consumption of Seafood
1.2. Place Attachment and Family Identity
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Participants
2.2. Data Collection
2.3. Methodological Limitations
2.4. Data Analysis
2.5. Data Collection Contex
2.6. Participant Demographics
3. Results
3.1. Students’ Experience with Seafood
3.1.1. Geographic Location
“I feel like most of my experience with seafood has been when we’ve taken vacations to the beach […] I feel like that’s where I trust it the most. Whereas at home, I know it doesn’t come locally as much. Maybe it does from aquaculture and stuff like that, but I don’t feel as comfortable eating it as I would in a beach setting or a coastal setting” (FG 8).
- Another participant explained, “I personally like seafood when I go to Florida, but I’m scared of eating it here because I don’t really know where it comes from, so I don’t trust it” (FG 6).
“Growing up we weren’t that far from the beach, maybe an hour or so from Florida. We always ate seafood. A big thing that we do with our family is every time we had our families over, we’d have a low country boil with a lot of seafood. It was a pretty big part of my diet” (FG 11).
3.1.2. Experience Fishing or with Fishermen
“We have a lot of lakes in the Midwest, so a lot of my friends hunt and they fish, but they fish for recreation, not really the consumption, just because the fish that you catch on the manmade lakes in Iowa are not very good. So, I know a lot of fishermen, but not in the sense that we eat the food that they catch” (FG 10).
- Participants who grew up in inland areas generally did not have experience fishing or with fishermen.
3.1.3. Seafood and Family
“My mom is allergic to shellfish, so seafood. We don’t really eat it in my household very much, but my dad and brother eat it. So, I just kind of grew up never eating it and never really being around it because of my mom. So I never really got exposed to it. I’ve tried it now, but my taste palette, I think it is steady in not liking seafood” (FG 4).
“I grew up for the most part in St. Simon’s. We spent a lot of our time there being my grandparents had a house there. We grew up deep sea fishing and pretty much every time we were in St. Simon’s I was eating seafood” (FG 10).
- Another example of seafood and family connected to experience fishing or with fishermen was going on family vacations where fishing played a role in family bonding. One participant explained, “[m]y entire family, we always go deep sea fishing—my dad, my uncle. We all go together deep-sea fishing. Yeah. I think I’ve been going since I was little” (FG 7).
3.2. Students’ Conceptualization of Seafood’s Role in Feeding People
3.2.1. Sustainability
“I feel like with all these situations, it’s a really fine line between feeding the population, but also being environmentally cautious. I feel like going forward just find solutions that cater to both because yes, you have to feed your population, but if you exploit the environment, then, in turn, you’re going to deplete your food source. I think finding solutions that think about long-term effects, but also cater, I guess, to both issues” (FG 5).
- In contrast, participants discussed the idea that sustainability should be a “top priority” (FG 2) as there are other food sources people can consume.
3.2.2. Regulations
“Having some sort of regulations on fishing and aquatic life conservation is pretty necessary, but at the same time you still need to have those jobs, and that we were talking about local fishermen. So, […] maybe have more laws and regulations on your massive fishing companies, and give a chance for local fishermen who are actually using it to make a living in those areas” (FG 7).
3.2.3. Limiting Seafood Consumption
“I really feel that in the next couple of years, there should be a push to decrease what I would call harvest fishing, as much as I hate to say that because I really appreciate that industry, but I think that can be supplemented by increases in production of fish or aquaculture just because you can make [it…] a little more sustainable. But it’s really a difficult situation all around, I hate to be the person that actually has to make those choices” (FG 11).
- Another participant discussed seafood as an industry that should exist locally and said, “From here, I think we should slowly tone down the seafood industry because there are many other more sustainable resources for food. I think that what industry we should keep should be small local businesses that help support local economies and tourism” (FG 3).
3.2.4. Limited Knowledge
“I don’t really know very much about it, but all my friends I know who do know a lot about sustainability are not very optimistic about sustaining fish, and they don’t eat fish and try to really promote not eating fish. So, I assume it’s a big problem” (FG 9).
- Other participants indicated they “didn’t know much about how the seafood industry works” (FG 11). From an economic standpoint, one participant explained “I don’t know enough about [the seafood industry], but I really have never heard of the […] fishing industry being like a huge part of our economy” (FG 2).
4. Discussion
4.1. Theoretical Findings
4.2. Limitations and Future Research
5. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Course Type | Pseudonym(s) | Number of Participants |
---|---|---|
Agricultural leadership | FG1, FG2, FG3 | 4, 4, 2 |
Service-learning | FG4, FG5, FG6, FG7, FG8, FG9 | 2, 5, 9, 8, 4, 5 |
Global food policy | FG10 | 5 |
Floriculture | FG11 | 11 |
F | % | |
---|---|---|
Gender Identity | ||
Male | 20 | 29.4 |
Female | 47 | 69.1 |
Age | ||
18 | 3 | 4.4 |
19 | 15 | 22.1 |
20 | 14 | 20.6 |
21 | 16 | 23.5 |
22 | 13 | 19.1 |
23 | 6 | 8.8 |
24 | 1 | 1.5 |
Race/Ethnicity a | ||
White | 55 | 80.9 |
Black or African American | 8 | 11.8 |
Asian | 2 | 2.9 |
Hispanic or Latino/a/x | 4 | 5.9 |
Prefer to self-describe (Middle Eastern) | 1 | 1.5 |
Student Classification | ||
First-year student | 4 | 5.9 |
Sophomore | 12 | 17.6 |
Junior | 25 | 36.8 |
Senior | 24 | 35.3 |
Graduate student | 1 | 1.5 |
Other (Exchange Student) | 1 | 1.5 |
College Enrollment | ||
College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences | 44 | 64.7 |
College of Arts and Sciences | 9 | 13.2 |
College of Business | 6 | 8.8 |
School of Public and International Affairs | 2 | 2.9 |
College of Engineering | 1 | 1.5 |
College of Journalism and Mass Communication | 1 | 1.5 |
College of Education | 1 | 1.5 |
Undeclared | 1 | 1.5 |
Topic Area | Themes | Theme Description | Codes Corresponding to the Theme | Focus Groups Corresponding to the Theme |
---|---|---|---|---|
Students’ experience with seafood | ||||
Geographic location | Growing up near the coast or visiting coastal communities. Growing up in landlocked areas. | 44 | 10 | |
Experience fishing or with fishermen | Participants who fish personally, knew a commercial fisherman, and/or who had family and friends who fish. Participants who did not have experience fishing or know anyone with fishing experience. | 43 | 7 | |
Seafood and family | Participants who have family members who eat seafood and/or who grew up eating seafood. Participants who have family members with health restrictions regarding seafood and/or who did not eat seafood growing up. | 32 | 9 | |
Students’ Conceptualization of Seafood’s Role in Feeding People | ||||
Sustainability | Taking care of the ecosystem/habitat. Preservation of the environment. | 40 | 10 | |
Regulations | Regulatory actions that encourage sustainability. | 21 | 8 | |
Limiting seafood consumption | Decreasing the amount of seafood people are consuming. | 14 | 6 | |
Limited knowledge | Uncertainty about how to implement sustainability in the seafood industry. | 9 | 5 |
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Gibson, K.E.; Sanders, C.E.; Byrd, A.R.; Lamm, K.W.; Lamm, A.J. The Influence of Sustainability on Identities and Seafood Consumption: Implications for Food Systems Education for Generation Z. Foods 2023, 12, 1933. https://doi.org/10.3390/foods12101933
Gibson KE, Sanders CE, Byrd AR, Lamm KW, Lamm AJ. The Influence of Sustainability on Identities and Seafood Consumption: Implications for Food Systems Education for Generation Z. Foods. 2023; 12(10):1933. https://doi.org/10.3390/foods12101933
Chicago/Turabian StyleGibson, Kristin E., Catherine E. Sanders, Allison R. Byrd, Kevan W. Lamm, and Alexa J. Lamm. 2023. "The Influence of Sustainability on Identities and Seafood Consumption: Implications for Food Systems Education for Generation Z" Foods 12, no. 10: 1933. https://doi.org/10.3390/foods12101933