Abstract
Recreational fishermen derive utility from catch and fishing effort. Building our analysis on the Gordon-Clark model for renewable resources, we show that a lower importance of catch may result in higher catches. While this effect also holds under first-best management, it may destabilize open-access recreational fisheries to the point of stock collapse. Technical progress in recreational fisheries may mask such dynamics as it enables unaltered angler behavior and constant catches during stock declines.
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Notes
This may hold for some commercial fishermen as well (Anderson 1980).
Excluding the case \(\theta >0\) shortens Propositions 1 and 2, but no result in this paper depends on the assumption \(\theta \le 0\).
The result that the curvature properties in the Cobb-Douglas case depend on an additional parameter as compared to the general CES case are analogous to the case of a non-renewable resource being essential or inessential for constant consumption (Dasgupta and Heal 1979).
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Stoeven, M.T. Enjoying Catch and Fishing Effort: The Effort Effect in Recreational Fisheries. Environ Resource Econ 57, 393–404 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-013-9685-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-013-9685-4