Half of the customers who dine in their restaurants hold unfavorable views of Louisiana seafood after last spring’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the owners of 18 national restaurants said in a study released by Greater New Orleans Inc. The study found that the greatest negative effect the spill had on public perception of Louisiana and New Orleans involved views on seafood safety and overall demand for the region’s seafood.
“At the start of this research, GNO, Inc. hypothesized that the oil spill had significantly damaged national perceptions of Louisiana and Greater New Orleans, and that this impact was cumulative on top of the public opinion damage done by Hurricane Katrina and the recovery,” the study reads. “Generally, our research did not support this prediction. The oil spill generally had a small impact on voters’ opinions of Louisiana and Greater New Orleans, with the significant exception of seafood. The demand for, and opinion of, Louisiana and Gulf seafood has decreased dramatically as a result of the oil spill.”