Unintended Consequences of Enforcement in a Fisheries Institution: Results from an Artefactual Experiment in Tanzania

<p>Overfishing and the destruction of fishing commons in developing countries is a growing problem. Policymakers and local community leaders are looking for solutions to keep their fishing commons sustainable. Fines and enforcement mechanisms are commonly suggested to help preserve the commons. This paper discusses a novel artefactual experiment conducted throughout several fishing communities in Tanzania to determine the effect of enforcing a ban on illegal fishing gear on fishing behavior. Results indicate that the fishers in the enforcement treatment group depleted the fish stock significantly faster than the unenforced control group. One possible explanation for this result is that the players in the enforcement group responded to cheating players by increasing their fishing efforts as a grim trigger response. Alternatively, the ban and subsequent enforcement mechanism crowded out fishers’ intrinsic attitudes to sustain the resource for future rounds in the game. The fishers may have been more focused on not using illegal fishing gear than they were with sustaining the resource. </p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science in International and Development Economics (MSIDEC)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Economics

Year dc:date.available

2015

Author dc:creator

• MacColl, Spencer

Contributors dc:contributor

• Yaniv Stopnitzky

• Fisheries
• Institutional Crowding Out
• Enforcement Regulations
• Experimental Economics
• Tanzania
• Agricultural and Resource Economics
• Growth and Development

Repository record dc:identifier

https://repository.usfca.edu/thes/141

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repository.usfca.edu:thes-1159