Fishery Participation and Location Choice: The West Coast Salmon Fishery

Suggested Bibliographic Reference: NAAFE Forum 2017 Proceedings, March 22-24, 2017. Compiled by Ann L. Shriver with assistance from Stefani Evers. North American Association of Fisheries Economists (NAAFE), Corvallis, 2017.A behavioral study on fishery participation and fishing location choice for the West Coast Salmon fishermen was undertaken to determine the effect of salmon fishery closures on the distribution of fishermen across alternative fisheries and fishing locations. A dataset describing fishing trips from West Coast salmon vessels from 2005 to 2014 was used in a Random Utility Model that estimated both fishery choice and fishing location jointly. The empirical model used expected revenues for different fishing alternatives and individual vessel’s past behavior to predict fishery and fishing location choices. The results support fisheries economics literature that fishery participation and location choice are associated with expected revenue, past behavior, and spatial and temporal closures. Our work suggests that caution must be exercised when modeling fishermen location choice in isolation. Ignoring the multi-species aspect of fisheries may lead to both poor characterization of fishing behavior and poor prediction of the effect of spatial management policies.