Aquaculture is assuming ever more importance in diminishing the pressure on wild stocks in the seas and to satisfy the demand of fish worldwide. Prices of feed used in farming fish are increasing, due the rise in demand. Research on sustainable sources of feed was recently intensified and insects as meal to substitute soybean and fish meals and fish oils seems a promising field. In particular only very few papers have explored consumer interest in fish feed. The objective of this study is to explore the attitude and behavior of Northern-Italian consumers of farmed fish fed on insects considering the different phases of the purchasing process: from a general claim to interest in sustainability about the use of marine resources to the attitude in to eating finfish products if fed on insect meals and finally to the

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In the last few years Rare Earth Materials (REMs) prices have experienced a strong increase, due to geopolitical policies and sustainability issues. Provided that these materials at risk of supply disruptions are largely employed in the development of new technologies-such as clean energy industries-financial markets may already have included these concerns into clean energy companies evaluation. We use a multifactor market model for the period January 2006-September 2012 to analyse the impact of REMs price changes-specifically Dysprosium and Neodymium-to six clean energy indexes (NYSE-BNEF) tracking the world's most active quoted companies in the clean energy sector. Results show that during period of price increase there is a negative relation between REMs price changes and the stock market performance of clean energy indexes, specifically wind. The European clean energy index is also negatively affected and this may be relevant to policy makers considering that Europe is putting in place some relevant policy actions to support the development of the clean energy sector.

Since global demand for aquaculture products is expected to increase dramatically in the near future, policymakers and companies are considering the adoption of insect-based feed, which is more economically viable and environmentally sustainable than fish or vegetable-based meals currently used. Nonetheless, fish farmed with insects are still perceived as innovative products by consumers, and further studies exploring these demand-side concerns must be conducted to make sure a market for such products exists. This study focuses on the factors that can favour the acceptance of farmed fish fed with insects of a sample of young Italians. In particular, within the theoretical framework adopted in this analysis, we let acceptance be expressed by different dimensions, each potentially influenced by individual factors, such as socio-economic characteristics, as the provision of information on the nutritional and environmental benefits of insect-based feed for aquaculture, and as consumer psychometric indicators. In this respect, we use the by-dimensional definition of environmental attitude proposed by environmental psychologists, that considers attitude toward environmental protection and toward nature. In this survey, we reached 482 consumers, aged less than 40, using social networks. A Factor Analysis was performed to identify the different dimensions of the acceptance process. We then applied the Rasch model on consumers’ reported behaviours toward environmental protection or nature to retrieve their environmental attitudes. We performed a Seemingly Unrelated Regression to assess the importance of socio-demographic, information, and psychometric variables on the different dimensions of acceptance. Results indicate that the use of psychometric variables to study the acceptability of an innovative food product seems particularly appropriate. In addition to the role of environmental attitude, acceptance is also explained by some socio-demographic variables, with men and younger consumers being more inclined to accept the product. Acceptance is also higher among informed respondents, confirming the importance of reducing information asymmetries.

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EU Regulation 1924/2006 introduced a European legal framework for nutrition messages for food product labels. The study analyses consumer interest towards nutrition labelling and claims, and examines the information consumers consider important during their purchasing decisions, and the main characteristics of those consumers interested in nutrition claims and nutrition labelling use. A total of 1,025 northern Italian consumers were surveyed. We estimate one binary logit model to investigate the use of nutrition labelling, and seven other ordinal regression models to analyse consumer interest towards nutrition claims and labelling. Consumers who use nutrition labelling have characteristics different from those who use nutrition claims. Consumers using nutrition labelling show a marked interest in food safety concerns, use experts as their source of information and have specific dietary habits. For consumers concerned about nutrition claims, the survey shows significant links with attributes influencing purchasing behaviour, such as price, brand, certification, etc. Socio-demographic characteristics are statistically significant and show a positive link with age, gender and a negative linkage with income. Copyright (c) 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation (c) 2009 The Agricultural Economics Society.

This article investigates the long-run relationship between spot and futures prices for corn and soybean. We apply cointegration methodology allowing for the presence of potentially unknown structural breaks in the commodities prices and we then study the causality relationships between spot and futures prices within each specific sub-period identified, with the aim to analyze where changes in spot and futures price originate and how they spread. Empirical estimates highlight the following evidence: i) multiple breaks exist in the cointegrating relationship between spot and futures prices for corn and soybean; ii) subperiods consequently identified express different dynamics in the causal relationship between spot and futures prices and support the idea that supply and demand fundamentals are important in explaining the 2007/08 food price increase.

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