Determinants of blue economy Growth in EU fisheries waters: MMQR and quantile-on-quantile analyses

The blue economy represents a critical pathway for sustainable ocean resource utilization in the European Union. Existing research has fragmentedly focused on individual indicators without comprehensively exploring their heterogeneous impacts across different blue economy performance levels. The absence of distributional analysis limits the formulation of evidence-based policies under the framework of the Common Fisheries Policy. This study investigates the heterogeneous effects of environmental (global warming, coastal eutrophication), resource management (natural resources, marine protected areas), and economic (aquaculture, financial development) factors on blue economy development (total fisheries production) in European Union countries under the jurisdiction of the Common Fisheries Policy from 2016 to 2021 using the Method of Moments Quantile Regression and Quantile-on-Quantile models. Results reveal that environmental pressures negatively impact total fisheries production in the long run, while resource management (except marine protected areas which show no statistically significant impacts) and economic factors have positive effects. Except for natural resources, whose effect weakens at higher quantiles, the impacts of all other variables strengthen with increasing quantiles. Given these findings, northern European countries with high fisheries performance should implement immediate carbon–neutral fishing fleet transition programs with 50% subsidies for electric or hybrid vessels by 2030, western European countries with intensive agriculture should implement precision nutrient application systems with 30% tax incentives, resource-rich European countries should establish mandatory reinvestment requirements of 15% of natural resource rents into blue economy infrastructure, and financially advanced European countries should foster fisheries modernization and sustainable technology adoption through the launching of €2 billion blue bond programs. Graphical Abstract