Musings on a Career in Applied Fisheries Economics Research

Abstract

This paper chronicles my fisheries compliance and enforcement research during the past 40 years. My colleagues and I at the University of Rhode Island began researching fisheries law enforcement issues around 1980 because of the high degree of noncompliance in fisheries managed by the New England Fisheries Management Council. We collected data and demonstrated that the pure deterrence model does not explain fisheries compliance behavior well. This set us on a course to develop an enriched model of compliance behavior. The formal enriched model accounts for tangible and intangible motivations influencing individuals’ compliance decisions, resulting in better explanations of the evidence than the pure deterrence model. The model also provides practical and superior policy prescriptions. Although the enriched model is superior to the basic pure deterrence model, much research remains to be done on explaining compliance behavior and crafting more efficient and effective compliance and regulatory programs in fisheries.