The incentives of a resource owner: Evidence from a private oyster fishery
Lawrence E. Eagling,
Elizabeth C. Ashton and
Josh Eagle
Marine Policy, 2015, vol. 58, issue C, 28-35
Abstract:
European flat oyster Ostrea edulis fisheries were once abundant around the UK coastline. The sole remaining productive O. edulis fishery in Scotland is in Loch Ryan. This fishery has been privately owned and managed by a single family since 1701. Economic theory predicts that ownership, whether public or private, is a necessary condition for rational fishery management. In this paper, a series of four leases and a licence are examined, covering an 85-year period over the 20th and 21st century, to examine whether the management of the Loch Ryan fishery conforms to the expected norms of rational management. The leases show that, over this period, the owners appear more willing to expend resources on regulating tenant behaviour, supporting the conclusion that successive generations of owners developed an evolving sense of what “rational management” might require. The results of this study could inform the management of other fisheries – both public and private – by emphasising the importance of learning from experience.
Keywords: Private ownership; Native oyster fishery; Ostrea edulis; Lease; Licence; Rational fisheries management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X1500086X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:marpol:v:58:y:2015:i:c:p:28-35
DOI: 10.1016/j.marpol.2015.04.004
Access Statistics for this article
Marine Policy is currently edited by Eddie Brown
More articles in Marine Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().