Subsidy policy for the retirement of aquaculture on the southwest coast of Taiwan: a case study of Budai township, Chia-Yi county

Abstract

This paper attempts to explore how the Taiwan government can effectively use subsidies to retire aquacultural farms based on the externality ground subsidence from pumping groundwater, using the town of Budai in Chia-Yi county as an example. The research first constructs the relationship between ground subsidence and groundwater consumption after taking the externality into consideration. An economic model that minimizes the total subsidy expenditure is then used for targeting the fish farms that need to be retired first in order to meet environmental goals. The results show that when the interaction caused by pumping groundwater among neighborhood farmers is considered, the responsibility for achieving the targets of environmental control is not evenly shared by aquacultural farmers. The location, and not the farm size, plays a more important role in determining whether environmental goals can be met.

Can Direct Marketing Increase Fishery Profitability and Environmental Quality? Empirical Evidence of Aquaculture Farm Households in Taiwan

“…Accordingly, we defined a dummy variable to capture the extensive margin of the aquaculture farm in the non-fishery labor market. It has been well documented that aquaculture production is associated with the severe problem of land subsidence in Taiwan [4,6,12]. Since one research objective in this paper is to examine whether the use of marketing channels has any impact on environmental quality, we defined a dummy variable to indicate if the fishery farm used groundwater as the major water source in its aquaculture production.…”

“…This part of the analysis sheds light on the relationship between marketing strategy and environmental sustainability because aquaculture production has resulted in serious pollution and land subsidence [4,5]. Due to the scarcity of fresh water in Taiwan, the over-pumping of groundwater in aquaculture production is common, making Taiwan a good study area for addressing this topic [6].…”