Co-management has been recognized as important in successfully governing common pool resources, including coastal fisheries. Fishery co-management, where fishermen collectively manage the fishery as a group, is garnering much attention, for example the the New England groundfish fishery's sector allocation scheme. One of the key characteristics of fishery co-management is the self-imposed rules and practices by the group that aims to achieve certain management goals. This researach focuses on one such practice, a pooling system, in which harvesters share catch and/or profits among members of the group. In Japan case studies have shown that pooling systems work well, but there is one problem: theoretically, pooling system cannot be effective due to the incentive to free-ride on other members' fishing effort. This study looks at how two mechanisms -- social capital and effort coordination -- may overcome the free-riding problem. Social capital refers to attributes such as trust, reciprocity and cooperation in human relationships. Effort coordination includes fishing ground rotation and joint marketing. This research empirically examines the inter-relationships of these mechanisms through surveys and experiments in at least twenty Japanese fishing communities.
This project provides a deeper understanding of how one management tool, namely pooling systems, may be applicable for regulators and stakeholders in US fisheries and other similar common pool resources. This new knowledge helps US fisheries to achieve both conservation of resources and economic efficiency of resource use especially in fisheries that are not able to employ effective regulations or an individual catch-share system. Furthermore, the results may show how these management tools can be applicable in developing countries as well as advanced industrial democracies. Eventually, this new knowledge will benefit society by contributing to both a better economy and a healthier environment.
In this dissertation research we empirically disentangled the efficiency mechanism of revenue sharing, in which a group of harvesters shares catch and/or revenue among members of a fishery cooperative, by incorporating the influence of social capital. In addition to each of revenue sharing and social capital influencing a fishery independently we hypothesized social capital potentially affecting efficiency of revenue sharing arrangement through strengthening collective fishing tasks performed as a group. The data were collected in Japan, which is one of the countries that have a long history of community-based management in fishery as well as ample cases of revenue sharing. The sample consists of ten groups, five of which are under revenue sharing and the other five are not and have never been under such arrangement. The sampling fishery groups were selected based on the observed characteristics. They all engage in a small-scale trawl fishery, targeting the Japanese surf clams and are located in Hokkaido prefecture, which means facing the same market, biological conditions, and historical backgrounds. INTELLECTUAL MERIT: This dissertation research provides the first rigorous analysis to measure the effect of revenue sharing and social capital in a co-managed fishery and to identify the mechanism through which revenue sharing and social capital affect the outcome of a fishery. We quantified social capital using controlled economic experiments with fisherman subjects as well as a survey method. We collected the data containing ten fishery groups and economic and biological outcomes for 23 years. Using random-effects model with wild cluster bootstrap for small sample inference, we find evidence of the long-run positive effect of trust in a community on the economic outcome. The results also show that the fisheries with fishers having similar information network size achieve better stock conditions over time. However, we find no evidence of the effect of revenue sharing improving the outcomes in a fishery or the effect of both revenue sharing and social capital interacting to affect the fishery or its management outcomes. BROADER IMPACTS: One of the main findings is that more fishers with more trusting attitudes in a fishery, not necessarily directed towards other fishers, can achieve higher prices in the long run, whether or not sharing revenue. This suggests that a trusting nature of fishers possibly affected by the surrounding community beyond the fishery can influence a specific outcome in the fishery, which is a part of the community. In addition, a positive effect of the information network size implies that information is a key in economic success of a fishery; as fishers exchange information from more diverse fishers, on average as a group they can fish better possibly because the information enables them to make a better decision on where to fish and how to utilize the stock enhancement in coordination with harvesting effort. The other finding is that a group with more cohesion in terms of how dense the information network is across its members can achieve better resource conditions over time. This implies that information should be spread evenly in a group for the health of the stock possibly because a group with a smaller disparity in information network can more successfully coordinate harvesting effort or/and stock enhancement effort as a group, which can generate positive benefits on the resource stock in the long term. These findings from this project are insightful to any organizations involving coordination in their tasks. In particular, small-scale trawl fisheries engaging in co-management can benefit most. The findings suggest that, regardless of specific management systems, trust and information network make a difference in the outcome of a fishery.
