Abstract
Many artisanal fishing communities struggle with overfishing. One potential channel to mitigate overfishing is through self-monitoring and denouncing of illegal fishing practices. In this paper, we investigate the determinants of fishermen’s willingness to report the catching of illegally small fish at a lake in Brazil. By using laboratory experiments and surveys, we provide novel evidence that impatience and pro-sociality play key roles. Fishermen who are more impatient in a laboratory inter-temporal choice experiment show a higher propensity to report misbehavior from other fishermen. This finding suggests that impatience is a driver for the punishment of resource exploitation. Moreover, we find that fishermen who are more pro-social in a laboratory public goods experiment are also more likely to report overfishing, suggesting that both time and social preferences are related to the reporting of resource overexploitation.
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Notes
Numerous animal and human studies show that high degrees of impulsivity are common (e.g. Fairbanks et al. 1999; Manuck et al. 2000; Seroczynski et al. 1999) rendering it possible that they are transmitted by genes and the product of frequency-dependent selection (Krebs and Davies 1993; Budaev 1999; Dingemanse and Reale 2005) or the result of an evolved mechanism responding to adverse environmental circumstances (Belsky et al. 1991).
From this does not follow that impatience is generally positively related to resource conservation. In fact, Fehr and Leibbrandt (2011) show that more impatient fishermen are more likely to use more exploitative fishing gear.
Fishermen can sell both, small and big fish, on markets. While big fish are sold for considerable higher prices per kg, small fish are also sold on markets.
We have worked in this setting for years with fishermen and their village leaders. We never experienced problems when trusting village leaders with payments.
Most of our fishers work full-time fishing. The reported fishing time of 25.05 h per week refers to the time spent fishing but does not include the time spent for preparation and sales activities.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Stefanie Engel, Andreas Leibbrandt and Michel Marechal and seminar participants for their feedback. I also would like to thank the Ostrom Workshop for hosting me as a research fellow when conducting this research. Finally, I would like to thank the Environmental Education Institute at the Feira de Santana State University in Brazi, as well as the participants in this study.
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Cavalcanti, C. On the Determinants of Denouncing Illegal Fishing: A Field Study in Artisanal Fishing Communities. Environ Resource Econ 77, 217–228 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-020-00471-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-020-00471-8