Social acceptability of marine aquaculture: The use of survey-based methods for eliciting public and stakeholder preferences

The social acceptability of aquaculture is linked to its perceived environmental impact, and this clearly poses a challenge to policy makers in deciding what weight to attach to such a concern within a governance framework for the industry. Using salmon farming in Scotland as a case study, we have developed a survey-based approach to evaluating public and stakeholder attitudes towards the environmental performance of aquaculture. The survey of the general public finds marked regional variations in attitudes towards salmon farming, while the results of the stakeholder survey raise issues over how far the preferences of particular interest groups are truly representative of the community as a whole.