Combined effects of social pressure from the inside and outside of fishing communities promote cooperation for stock management

Abstract

We analyze a coupled socioeconomic and bioeconomic dynamics model for fisheries management in a local community. In the model, fishermen choose to cooperate with the fisheries management rule or not at each time step, depending on the utilities of each option. The social dynamics is coupled with the dynamics of the stock biomass. Fishermen's utility basically depends on their catch, and the utility function of the noncooperative option is penalized by a psychological punishment, “social pressure”, which is affected by both the fraction of cooperative players and stock abundance. We classify social pressure into two categories: pressure originating from the inside and from the outside of the community. We develop a utility function with these social pressures and analyze the coupled dynamics. Our results show that all fishermen can end up cooperating with the management rule if both sources of internal and external social pressure have sufficient effect. The results imply that psychological aspects on fishermen can have an important role for successful management of local fisheries.