Substitute and complement relations among various fish species in the Japanese market: implications for fishery resource management

Abstract

A demand system analysis was conducted to examine the substitute relationships between tuna and skipjack tuna in the Japanese market. Data from the Annual Report on Family Income and Expenditure Survey from 1965 to 2006 were used for the analysis using the almost ideal demand system (AIDS). Results suggest that skipjack tuna can be a strong substitute for tuna, while other fish groups are not a clear substitute. Our analysis of substitute relationships among fish species in a market indicates that this is a factor that should be considered for better fisheries resource management. For instance, even under a situation where one fish species is underexploited, proper attention to its fishery management is necessary if the fish is a strong substitute for another popular fish species in the market.

The Bumpy Road of Demand Growth—An Application to Atlantic Salmon

“…Studies using datasets from the 1990s and earlier have typically found that the demand for salmon is elastic (Asche, Bjørndal, and Salvanes 1998;Asche, Bremnes, and Wessells 1999;Asche, Salvanes, and Steen 1997;DeVoretz and Salvanes 1993), whereas a review of the recent literature, using data from the late 1990s to 2010, has reported elasticity values both in the elastic and inelastic ranges; between −0.2 and −1.7 ( For markets in which previous studies have reported elasticities of demand for salmon, we set the elasticity parameter to the mean of the reported values. This process yields the following elasticity values: for the United States, −0.7 (Jones, Wozniak, and Walters 2013;Davis, Lin, and Yen 2007); for the EU mainland, −1.1 (Xie and Myrland 2011); and for Japan, -1.5 (Sakai et al 2009). Markets such as Brazil, Russia, and the ROW have a lower average income than the European Union and Japan, for instance, and it might be expected that the income difference would be reflected in more elastic salmon demand.…”

Range contraction enables harvesting to extinction

“…For example, studies have found moderate-to-high market substitutability between species within broad classes of fish products (see ref. [33] for review), including between most tuna species [36,47]. Species whose harvests have perfect substitutes are unlikely to be profitably harvested to extinction [26], because perfect substitutes cause the abundance-sensitivity of a species' price to diminish as it approaches extinction (see SI Materials and Methods).…”

The demands they are a-changin’

“…The elasticity parameters are reported in table 1. We use the homogeneity restriction to compute cross-price elasticities b Based on reported elasticity values for France, the largest market in the EU, from (Xie & Myrland, 2011) c Based on reported elasticities from (C. Davis, Lin, & Yen, 2007;Jones, Wozniak, & Walters, 2013) d Based on reported elasticities from (Sakai, Yagi, Ariji, Takahara, & Kurokura, 2009) e Based on reported elasticities from (Chidmi, Hanson, & Nguyen, 2012;Davis, Lin, & Yen, 2007;Fousekis & Revell, 2004;Hong & Duc, 2009;Jones, Wozniak, & Walters, 2013;Muhammad & Jones, 2011;Sakai, Yagi, Ariji, Takahara, & Kurokura, 2009;Tiffin & Arnoult, 2010;Xie, Kinnucan, & Myrland, 2009;Xie & Myrland, 2011) f Based on reported elasticities from . For EU we use the estimate for France, which has the highest salmon consumption in in the EU (Asche and Bjørndal, 2011).…”

“…For Japan, we use elasticity values from(Sakai et al, 2009) where they estimate i,fish,Y with regards to the conditional elasticity i,M , and compute , following the same procedure as in this article.…”