Co-management is considered an alternative approach to fisheries management,
however, not all co-managed fisheries have been successful. Most studies discussing the
success and failure of co-management have emphasized economic and social attributes of
success and failure, such as fishery rights and institutional arrangements. The effect on
co-management of biological characteristics, such as the growth rate of the fish stock and
the stock size, has gained little attention.
This study investigates the influence of intrinsic growth rate (r) and relative
stock size (B') on fishers' decision to cooperate with catch quotas. The concept of mixed
strategies from game theory is incorporated with basic economic concepts and a biomass
dynamics model to capture important aspects in a fishery cooperative. The discounting
concept is applied to capture the fishers' tendency to cooperate (��[subscript i]). Profits from fishing
are specified for each fisher within a 2 by 2 matrix with two players and two strategies
(cooperative and non-cooperative). When both players have dominant strategies, where
one player's best strategy coincides with the other player's best strategy, the game has a
pure strategy equilibrium. Alternatively, the equilibrium outcome of the game is
determined using mixed strategies.
The results indicate that the biological parameters, r and B', influence fishers'
cooperation. However, social parameters (��[subscript i]) and economic parameters (profit/cost ratio
when the stock is at the carrying capacity) must also be considered. Furthermore, this
study finds that the fishers are more likely to play the cooperative strategy over very wide
ranges of r and B' when their tendencies to cooperate are high. In contrast, the fishers are
more likely to play mixed strategy when their tendencies to cooperate are low. Having a
large discrepancy between the fishers' tendencies to cooperate has less influence on the
outcomes of the game than having high values for the fishers' tendencies to cooperate.
The profit/cost ratio generally accentuates the most frequent outcomes of the game. For
instance, if the outcomes are mostly mixed strategies, a higher ratio expands the mixed
strategy outcomes over wider ranges of r and B'. / Graduation date: 2001
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ORGSU/oai:ir.library.oregonstate.edu:1957/32636 |
| Date | 12 January 2001 |
| Creators | Trisak, Jiraporn |
| Contributors | Sampson, David B. |
| Source Sets | Oregon State University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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