An evaluation of self-governance in the New Zealand Bluff oyster fishery—A modelling approach

Many fisheries economists consider ITQ-based self-governance to be the future of fisheries management. This management regime is argued to have a positive impact on fisheries management. Researchers often use unstructured case studies to empirically evaluate this management regime. Yet those analyses remain discipline-specific. In addition, the methods used in the case studies are often descriptive and unable to separate the contribution of self-governance from that of ITQs—another effective fisheries management tool. The lack of rigorous empirical evaluation to date calls for a more structured approach to examine self-governance regimes, and to enable better-informed judgement whether the merits of ITQ-based self-governance can be realised. This paper reports systematic evaluation of fisheries self-governance for a New Zealand fishery. A bio-economic model is used to project the fishery's stock status and the industry's profitability. By combining a Bayesian statistics approach in the biological sub-model with a system dynamics approach in the economic sub-model, this research is able to identify the contribution of self-governance above that of ITQs. The self-governed Bluff oyster fishery is studied to test the practicality of the bio-economic model and to determine the impact of self-governance on the fishery's management. The analysis yields results that shed some light on ITQ-based self-governance. First, supporting theoretical literature, the self- governance regime promotes economic efficiency in the fishery. In addition, ITQ-based self-governance adds value to fish stock management because of the positive relationship between profitability and stock abundance.