Influence of Fishermen's Preferences on the Success of Commercial Fishery Management Regimes

Abstract Fishermen may opt for goals of stock rebuilding and stable yield when fish stocks are depleted and the short term outlook for catches is poor but reject these goals when a good year class appears. The purpose of this study was to determine whether this apparent ambivalence among fishermen is a consequence of changing preference for short and long term returns or can be accounted for by the change in short term pay-off associated with good recruitment. I derived realistic short and long term pay-offs by exploiting a population model of the Gulf of Maine herring (Clupea hareugus) stock under two regimes. The goal of one regime was to obtain long term stable yields while the goal of the other was to take windfall yields from occasional good year classes. I used a multi-attribute utility model to determine if there was a set of preference weights for short and long term returns that would cause fishermen logically to choose the stable yield regime when the short term outlook was poor but to choose th...