Satisfaction with fishing and the desire to leave

Abstract

Predicting who may leave a fishery is an important consideration when designing capacity reduction programs to enhance both ecological and economic sustainability. In this paper, the relationship between satisfaction and the desire to exit a fishery is examined for the Queensland East Coast Trawl fishery. Income from fishing, and changes in income over the last 5 years, were key factors affecting overall satisfaction. Relative income per se was not a significant factor, counter to most satisfaction studies. Continuing a family tradition of fishing and, for one group, pride in being a fisher was found to be significant. Satisfaction with fishing overall and the challenge of fishing were found to be the primary drivers of the desire to stay or leave the fishery. Surprisingly, public perceptions of fishing, trust in management and perceptions of equity in resource allocation did not significantly affect overall satisfaction or the desire to exit the fishery.

Family Involvement and Sustainable Family Business: Analysing Their Effects on Diversification Strategies

“…In our case, both types of risk were associated to the same fishery (the alternative fishery) and, consequently, we could not distinguish them. Pascoe et al [55] analysed the exit decisions and found that satisfaction with fishing of the challenge of fishing was key on exit decisions whereas other economic variables were not significant. On the other hand, we have extended these and other previous works in the fishing sector by including the effect of other organizational variables such as separation of ownership and management, family employees or family related managers.…”

“…Depending on which of these two fisheries is closer to sustainable levels, it could be interesting to encourage fishermen to operate in one or another. This is a relevant issue as overcapacity in fisheries is widely accepted as a major problem at the international level [55]. A deep knowledge of the potential reactions of the fleet at the individual level could provide interesting policy implications and could also provide a hint for a better management design.…”

“…Many authors maintain that a key issue to achieve sustainable management of fish resources is to understand fishers' behaviours and fleet dynamics [63] and have stressed that fisheries should be managed according to biophysical and socioeconomic elements [62]. Furthermore, our study tries to answer the call of [55] that reckon that while economic influence is important, a more global examination of the factors driving fisher's behaviour is needed. A key contribution of this study is that it may help to understand the diversification decisions in the fishing sector.…”

“…Many fisheries seem to be over exploited and in constant crisis, reason for which, understanding the mechanisms of why and when small fishing firms take the option to operate in alternative fisheries is crucial because a switch to alternative fisheries can be of help for the recovery of overexploited fisheries. Predicting who may leave a fishery or who may alternate a specific fishery with another seasonal fishery is an important consideration when designing capacity reduction programs to enhance both ecological and economic sustainability [55].…”

“…This variable is assumed to control for variability in performance due to the firm itself. Effectively, changes in income over time affects the satisfaction with income [55] and may drive fishers decisions. We considered the standard deviation in the firm's performance of the average revenues per day.…”