Econometric analysis of the factors contributing to the fish price increase in coastal TURFs in Japan: the case of income-pooling fishery for coastal shrimp “Sakuraebi Sergia lucens”

Abstract

While rights-based management systems have often been encouraged as effective management tools, few studies have analyzed the effects of those systems empirically. In this article, we have focused on a special form of the territorial use rights in fisheries strategy, namely, an income-pooling system, and examined the effects of this system empirically. Earlier studies have regarded the control of fish landing amount and improvement of the quality of fish as the two main determining factors in such a system. Consequently, in our study, we estimated the relationships between these two factors and the price of fish using the econometric method. The results show that the two factors do indeed have significant effects on price changes.

Are Territorial Use Rights in Fisheries (TURFs) sufficiently large?

“…This represents a conservative calculation since the assigned TAC for TURFs is calculated as 15-25% of the available biomass [16]. The information was gathered from data and figures available in peer reviewed publications and governmental reports [14,16,23,25,36,37,38,42] using Web Plot Digitizer [34].…”

“…In particular, unitization or income pooling, where the users of the resources share profits and thus face reduced incentives to take actions that negatively affect the yields of neighboring users, is a well-known solution to spatial externalities [18]. Several authors have described the income pooling systems of the case studies analyzed from México and Japan [18,38,44,47]. The FEDECOOP TURFs depend on a unitization arrangement, since the cooperatives give a portion of their profits to the Federation, and these profits are then returned to the cooperatives in the form of "marketing services, technical expertise for fisheries management, and a venue for collective bargaining" [9,22].…”

“…The FEDECOOP TURFs depend on a unitization arrangement, since the cooperatives give a portion of their profits to the Federation, and these profits are then returned to the cooperatives in the form of "marketing services, technical expertise for fisheries management, and a venue for collective bargaining" [9,22]. In Suruga Bay the cooperatives have developed an income pooling arrangement that has helped this fishery become one of the most profitable in Japan [38]. Finally, the walleye pollock TURF's cooperative efforts have resulted in the design of a rotation system to reduce the inequalities in access to the best fishing grounds [47].…”