Chapter five in SALT's "Overcoming Barriers" series on adopting electronic traceability

Role of Human Behavior in Electronic Traceability Implementation

Introduction

Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing damages fish stocks around the globe. Additionally, illegal fishing practices can sometimes occur alongside human rights abuses. Now, the world is waking up to these injustices. Government import regulations are working to ensure illegal products don’t enter their national markets, and some consumers are voicing their preference for certified and sustainably harvested fish¹.

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Electronic traceability is the recording and sharing of relevant seafood product information via electronic means (2). Full chain, electronic traceability entails the electronic capture and sharing of seafood product information from the point of catch until the point of sale. It has the potential to make it easier for the seafood industry to comply with regulations and meet consumer demands.

Thankfully, companies currently deliberating making the switch to electronic traceability are not the first companies to undergo this conversion. The trailblazers who have piloted electronic traceability, along with their NGO partners, have written case studies, described solutions that helped them overcome obstacles, and created tools to make the process easier for others. Here, SALT has distilled this information to walk the seafood industry through the barriers to adopting electronic traceability and provide potential solutions to overcoming the challenges a company might face. This blog is the fifth and final in the series, “Overcoming Barriers: Solutions for adopting electronic traceability.”

Image of three fishers handling a fishing net

In the previous “Overcoming Barriers” blogs, SALT addressed the indirect and direct benefits for industry when widespread electronic traceability is adopted, as well as the challenges of sharing data seamlessly across the supply chain. In this blog, SALT covers how human behavior can both impede and catalyze progress towards traceability. Namely, we discuss the following behavioral barriers:

Perception: competitive culture within the seafood industry fuels mistrust
Self-interest: physical, financial, and emotional rewards hinder progress
Lack of information: inadequate education on traceability

We also dive into specific tactics to help foster collaboration and implement traceability more effectively, such as:

Co-design: involving stakeholders in the design process
Incentives: reasonably rewarding participation
Education: raising awareness of the benefits of electronic traceability

To read the rest of the blog, you can find it here:

^[1] Sterling et al., 2015

^[2] Future of Fish Seafood Traceability Glossary