Time preferences of food producers between fishermen and farmers: Do "cultivate and grow" matter?

Resource scarcity and food security are two important issues due to overexploitation of natural resources with increasing population, market demand and mass production, whereas fishermen and farmers have been two main occupations that produce food, utilizing natural resources. The production mode between fishermen and farmers is distinct in that fishermen (farmers) harvest (cultivate, grow and harvest), leading to different daily life style and culture. It is hypothesized that such differences in daily practices and production mode between fishermen and farmers characterize their time preferences or discounting behaviors. We have conducted a discounting elicitation experiment for fishermen and farmers in Indonesia. The statistical analysis shows that the average (median) discount factors of farmers are 0.48 (0.50), respectively, whereas those of fishermen are 0.30 (0.10). The betafit and median regressions demonstrate that the discount factors of farmers are 9.8% and 26.8% higher than those of fishermen, respectively, implying that fishermen are much more shortsighted than farmers. This result appears to reflect that farmers wait or "cultivate and grow" six months for their harvest because of which they save some portion of their income, while fishermen catch or "harvest" fish every day and typically use up their daily income. Although same policies have been uniformly implemented on these two occupations, the government may need some devices and education on fishermen to nurture a culture of "cultivate and grow" fish stock for promoting long-term conservation behaviors as well as sustaining fishery and their lives.