Commercial fishery as an asset for recreational demand on the coastline: evidence from a choice experiment in France, United-Kingdom and Belgium.
Résumé
The concept of multifunctionality of fisheries is emerging, as fishery activities do not only provide
commodity goods but have others functions (territorial and social). The capacity of fishing activities to attract
visitors in tourist areas is one of the most believable functions with respect to the multifunctionality of fisheries:
Visitors like to see boats in the ports and fishes in the markets. People are sensitive to aesthetic, social,
cultural and heritage amenities related to fishing activities (presence of boats and fishermen, fish landings and selling). Here, we have to deal with an almost pure public good, for which the degree of jointness in
the production of marketed goods and services depends on the type of the activity (probably stronger for
small-scale fisheries and direct sales than for deep-sea fishing and sales auction). We tried to see if the
amenities produced by commercial fisheries are valued by visitors. Do fishing activities contribute to the
attractiveness of the coast? We assume that the individual choices to go on a site on the coast are a function
of attributes describing this site. Attributes selected include recreational activities, amenities of the seaside
and amenities produced by fishing activities: coastal trails, marina, beach, architectural heritage, fishing boats
and direct sales of seafood caught by local fishermen. Furthermore, we used a distance attribute as a proxy
of cost. We used choice experiments to study individuals stated preferences for these various attributes. From
the individual choices of virtual sites (built by mixing the different attributes and their levels), we analyzed
the individual trade-off between attributes. During the summer 2013, a large survey was conducted in the
neighboring departments of the Channel and the North sea coasts in France, in United-Kingdom and in
Belgium, on a sample of 2 000 people. A random parameter logit model (mixed logit) was used to analyze
individual choices, enabling to avoid limitations of a standard logit model and allowing for random taste variation. We supposed heterogeneous preferences between individuals for all attributes of sites (including the
cost attribute). As each surveyed people perform several choices, our data set is a panel. The analysis of the
distribution for the estimated parameters shows that for all the investigated population, every attribute contributes positively to the utility. All the selected attributes are relevant to explain the choice of sites on seaside. Estimations show the preferences for the attributes of interest (“fishing boat” and “direct sale”) are especially heterogeneous between the individuals. We used a lognormal distribution for the random parameters that enables us to calculate the moments for the distribution of willingness to pay (WTP). The estimated means of willingness to pay for the characteristics of sites are all positive. Even if respondents prefer much better the "beach” and “coastal paths” attributes, the “fishing boats” attribute is the fourth higher mean of WTP, very close behind the “architectural heritage” one. Besides, the analysis of the distribution for the WTP for the presence of fishing boats shows that for a part of the sample, the mean of the “fishing boats” WTP is really
high. Surveyed people having a link with fishing (professional, recreational, family, etc.) in France, or being
native of the seaside in United Kingdom, have also stronger WTP for the “fishing boats” and “direct sales”
attributes than other people. Then, according to our econometric results, we can conclude that individuals
like to see fishing boats on the coastline and that fresh fish caught by local fishermen landed and directly sold
on the ports or in local open markets is also an attraction for visitors. These attributes are positive externalities
produced by inshore fisheries.