Supervisors: Karen Brunsø & Violeta Stancu
Discussants: Marija Banovic & John Thøgersen

Abstract
At present, harmonizing and coordinating marine aquaculture activities with sustainable seafood consumption patterns and values is essential to achieving sustainable blue growth. Therefore, success in the balance between a healthy marine environment and high-quality seafood production is based on a better understanding of seafood consumption patterns, consumer behaviors, and diverse socio-demographic dimensions. Such understanding includes ensuring food security by producing and consuming alternative species and products such as economically profitable and environmentally friendly products of low-trophic level aquaculture (LTL) products (e.g., mollusks, oysters, seaweeds). In the first part of the Ph.D., I will first investigate consumer segments of LTL aquaculture products based on an analysis of consumer attitudes. Since consumers' adoption intentions are important estimators for seafood consumption, the study will partially focus on consumers’ adoption intention toward LTL aquaculture products via evaluation of consumers’ food-related lifestyles, health consciousness, food involvement, food neophobia, and eagerness to compromise on taste, and pro-environmentalism. This study also contributes to the theories (e.g., an integrated theory of planned behavior and norm activation models) by discovering potential interrelationships among the model components (e.g., consumers’ awareness, the ascription of responsibility, and external variables (e.g., pro-environmentalism, food neophobia). Overall, the study will provide novel insights for a better understanding of consumer attitudes toward LTL aquaculture products.

Keywords: Low-trophic level, aquaculture, consumer, planned behavior, norm- activation.

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