Hedonic Price Analysis of Ex-Vessel Cod Markets in Norway

Despite seafood markets becoming increasingly globalized with common price determination processes, there is increasing evidence of heterogeneity within these markets, creating differentiation opportunities and new margins that producers can optimize. In particular, an increasing number of studies using hedonic price functions show that attributes such as size, quality, and harvesting process have value. These studies primarily focus on different attributes in product space. There is also increasing evidence that social considerations in fisheries management create inefficiencies that may show up as differences between vessel groups, but this may also result in regional price differences. In this study we have detailed data on Norwegian landings of cod by region. This allows us to investigate whether the margins vary by region, indicating market heterogeneity also in the geographical dimension. While the basic attributes, and particularly size, are most important, the results indicate that attribute values do vary by region. This indicates that the margins that fishers and buyers optimize over vary geographically, possibly because of resource availability, regional market differences, or management-created constraints. It is also of interest to note that higher prices for passive gear such as longline are primarily associated with mobile oceangoing vessels.