SEANET Project

Project overview

The Sustainable Ecological Aquaculture Network (SEANET) project is an large interdisciplinary project through Maine EPSCoR that aims to balance best management practices and social concerns with the health of the coastal ecosystem and wild fisheries to create an economically viable aquaculture industry in Maine. Aquaculture provides an excellent setting to study how resource management decisions impact resource users and public preferences for resource policy and products. My research on this project focuses on: (1) coastal development of aquaculture on residential property values and (2) consumer preferences for aquaculture-labeled seafood products.

This research is supported by the National Science Foundation under EPSCoR award #IIA-1355457 and the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture under Hatch project #ME021704.

Photo credit: Bangor Daily News (2014)

Coastal development of aquaculture on residential property values

Published work:

Evans, K.S., X. Chen, and C.A. Robichaud. (2017) "A hedonic analysis of the impact of marine aquaculture on coastal housing prices in Maine." Agricultural and Resource Economics Review. 46(2): 242-267.

Ongoing research:

Spatial hedonic model exploring heterogeneity of preferences for proximity to coastal aquaculture. (with Christina Robichaud)
Hedonic property value model investigating the visual impact of marine shellfish aquaculture on coastal homes in Maine. (with Amy Bainbridge and Caroline L. Noblet)
Equilibrium sorting model measuring welfare changes in three coastal regions of Maine from large-scale development of aquaculture in their coastal waters. (with Avery Cole)
Online choice experiment of Maine coastal homeowners investigating preferences for coastal development (e.g., aquaculture versus commercial fishing). (with Olga Bredikhina and Caroline L. Noblet)

Photo credit: Island Institute (2018)

Consumer preferences for aquaculture-labeled seafood products

Published work:

Brayden, C., C.L. Noblet, K.S. Evans, and L. Rickard. (2018) ``Consumer Preferences for Seafood Attributes of Wild Harvested and Farm-Raised Products.'' Aquaculture Economics and Management. 22(3): 342-361.

Ongoing research:

Seafood-consumer choice experiments investigating the effect of survey elicitation mode (i.e., online versus in-person) on preferences for aquaculture-labeled products. (with Olga Bredikhina and Caroline L. Noblet)
Online choice experiment of US seafood consumers exploring preference heterogeneity for seafood product labels (i.e., aquaculture versus wild-capture) and response to positive information about the economic contribution of aquaculture in the US. (with Caroline L. Noblet)

Graduate student miscellany

Christina Robichaud, MS REP 2017

Amy Bainbridge, MS REP (2nd-year)

Avery Cole, MS ECO (2nd-year)

Olga Bredikhina, MS ECO (2nd-year)

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