Behavioral Modeling and Fisheries Management

Because of the extreme uncertainty in fisheries biology, efforts to determine a stock-recruitment relationship have not been entirely successful. In the face of this certainty, this paper argues for a change in focus for fisheries economics from bioeconomic optimization toward goals which are more modest and more easily achievable. In particular, a satisficing approach to management is advocated, whereby efforts are made to reallocate some porportion of effort from overutilized to underutilized fisheries, with no attempt to determine the optimum. In order to achieve such a solution efficiently, managers must accurately predict the response of fishermen to public policy. This paper reports on a study which develops a discrete choice model to predict fishermen's supply response. Fishermen are shown to respond to economic incentives of expected returns and variability of returns, but only after these incentives surpass a substantial threshold.Institutional and Behavioral Economics,