Pre, mid and post-COVID-19 aquatic food purchasing behavior in China

This paper aims to understand the changes in what, how, and where people consumed and purchased aquatic food due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the factors affecting the purchase of aquatic food by Chinese residents. The theoretical basis is Stimulus-Organism-Behavior-Consequence (SOBC) with the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), and a theoretical model was proposed to explain Chinese residents’ aquatic food purchasing behavior. The methods used in this paper are descriptive statistical analysis and empirical analysis based on structural equation model (SEM). The former is used to compare the characteristics of aquatic food purchasing behavior in different periods. The latter used the 1708 responses obtained in the survey to identify the factors that influence aquatic food purchasing behavior. The results reveal that 1) the frequency, types and channels of residents' purchase of aquatic food were different before, during and after the epidemic; 2) SOBC model can effectively explain the formation mechanism of residents' aquatic food purchasing behavior. The results of this study can provide reference for aquatic food marketers and fishery development in China.