Combining Actual and Stated Behavior Data to Measure the Economic Impacts of Catch and Release Regulations in a Vulnerable Recreational Fishery

This presentation will review research on the impacts of catch-and-release regulations on the demand for recreational fishing. One of the most important tools in fisheries conservation is harvest regulations, which depending on the status of the fishery can range from generous daily bag limits to catch and release with gear restrictions.  When fisheries managers face an increasingly vulnerable population, harvest restrictions can be quickly adjusted to reduce fishing-induced mortality. In practice, however, revising regulations is challenging because of uncertainty about the consequences to angler retention and recruitment. To address this uncertainty, we present estimates of the impacts that catch and release regulations have on the demand for a sportfish species whose range is increasingly limited due to habitat modification and overharvesting. Specifically, we focus on the American paddlefish, which is classified as vulnerable by the IUCN. Actual and stated behavior data are combined to develop a model of fishing trips, a strategy that allows us to estimate the impact of a hypothetical catch and release rule while controlling for unobserved confounders in catch rates. We find while anglers generally favor less regulated sites, catch and release-only sites do not appear as much a deterrent to participation as one might expect.