Substitution in recreational fishing

Abstract

Fisheries managers need to measure participation rates and patterns to understand how anglers will respond to management actions and to changes in the recreational landscape. Understanding substitution in recreational fishing is an important component of gauging anglers' behavioural response to these changes. Substitution has implications for licence sales if anglers switch to different activities, stock impacts if anglers switch to different species and crowding if anglers switch locations. In this chapter, current methodologies used by social psychologists and economists to measure activity substitution, target-species substitution and site substitution are discussed. Each disciplinary approach reviews several studies that directly or indirectly examined angler substitution giving the reader the background necessary for more in-depth examination of substitution. Finally, both disciplinary approaches are compared and contrasted with an eye towards integrating substitution research across the two disciplines.