Fishery Regulation, Perceptions and Compliance : The Fishermen Responses

One of the most important issues debated in fishery economics is whether management measures imposing fishing restrictions are respected or not and therefore which are the factors influencing the behaviour of fishermen under regulation. Many psychological, sociological and economic factors affect the individual decision to comply or violate. These include the judgement on the enforcement system, the moral perception of regulatory system, the level of involvement in the management process, the perception of peers' behaviour, cultural and social characteristics of the agents and other economic factors, such as expected financial gains and penalties. The paper proposes a methodology of measurement of fishermen's responses to regulations based on two empirical case studies, which relates to the restrictions on minimum distances from the coast and marine protected areas in the Italian Ligurian Sea. The estimation techniques are based on discrete dependent variable models (probit models)