A study on socio-economic profile, behavior and constraints in fish consumption in district Ganderbal of Kashmir Valley

The current study was carried out in Ganderbal district in J&K with the purpose to understand consumer’s behavior and constraints faced by fish consumers in the study area. A specially designed questionnaire was prepared and data was collected in two different blocks of the Ganderbal district. The data was collected and analyzed statically using appropriate statistical tools. The study revealed that 34.17% of consumers of Ganderbal district purchased fish once in a month. Consumer preference towards fresh fish is found to be 70% compared to canned, dried, smoked and frozen fish. Among the fish species, majority of the consumers prefer to eat Trout (43.33%) followed by Schizothorax (21.67%), carp (13.33%) and 20% have no choice of choosing fish. The majority of respondents around 52.92% consumed fish in winters and followed by consumers who like to consume fish all the year round (37.5%). The 25% population of the above said district consume fish lesser due to scarcity of fish, lack of retail units in neighborhood and high price were main constraints fishconsumer face inthe study area.