Prosocial fish consumption and implications for labeling policy

•We studied how fish consumers in japan respond to cause-related marketing.•There is high marginal willingness to pay for a cause, but segmental heterogeneity.•A local cause is more effective than a global one.•Experience, not knowledge, is an important factor in prosocial purchasing. As concerns about consumers’ social purchasing, especially in developed countries, increase, marketing strategies and policy geared to solving social problems, such as resource overuse must consider consumer behavior. By focusing on fish consumption and cause-related marketing that targets prosocial consumers, we considered how consumers respond to this strategy and accordingly segmented them. We used choice experiments to estimate consumers’ willingness to pay for products labeled based on their contribution to different “causes,” and its distribution. The results showed that consumers have considerably more marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for causes than for other common attributes. Consumers also have higher MWTP, on average, for local causes than for global ones. We confirmed that there is heterogeneity in the MWTP for causes among consumers based on three consumer segments: the majority who have MWTP for both local and global causes, some who have MWTP only for local causes, and a minority who are cause-resistant. Segmentation analysis, providing valuable insights for marketing managers and policymakers, suggested that experience is more important than knowledge in guiding consumers toward prosocial behavior.