Transaction Costs and Fisheries Co-Management

Abstract

Fisheries co-management as an alternative to centralized command and control fisheries management is often suggested as a solution to the problems of fisheries resource use conflicts and overexploitation. This paper highlights some elements of the transaction costs under a fisheries co-management system. The transaction costs can be categorized into three major cost items: (i) information costs, (ii) collective fisheries decision-making costs, and (iii) collective operational costs. An approach to measuring transaction costs of fisheries comanagement systems both in static and dynamic processes is also proposed. There is a need to empirically evaluate the nature of the transaction costs involved in fisheries comanagement institutions as a basis for evaluating the efficiency or net benefits of co-managed fisheries compared to centrally managed fisheries.

Conservation of Brazilian coral reefs in the Southwest Atlantic Ocean: a change of approach

“…These strategies include a wide range of rules, laws, economic instruments and community-based management (Abdullah et al, 1998;Wiber et al, 2004), with the objective of ensuring efficient and fair exploitation among stakeholders. Management regulations may include spatial and temporal controls of each catch or nominal fishing effort, which is usually supplemented with technical measures, such as restrictions on fishing equipment or size limits (Holland, 2003;Nobre & Schiavetti, 2013).…”

Measuring transaction costs incurred by landowners in multiple land-use situations

“…According to Abdullah et al (1998), following Williamson (1985), transaction costs can be divided into ex ante and ex post costs (Paavola and Adger, 2005). Ex ante costs include a range of expenses incurred in devising appropriate regulations and the institutional bodies required to manage a shared natural resource, while ex post costs include the costs of implementing and monitoring these various arrangements.…”

“…In this case, the aim of analysing the established format of consultations, besides improving the multiple land-use situations, is to find causal factors influencing transaction costs. The results may be used to find acceptable solutions that improve institutions' activities and thus minimize transaction costs and reduce negative effects (Hanna, 1994;Abdullah et al, 1998;Paavola and Adger, 2005).…”

Effectiveness of participatory planning for community management of fisheries in Bangladesh

“…(e) On the other hand transaction costs-costs of information collection, time and effort spent in decision making, implementing decisions and in monitoring compliance and impacts-can be a significant cost of community-based management (Adhikari and Lovett, 2006). There are arguments that in the long-run comanagement and community-based management systems may reduce transaction costs compared with centralised management, for example by establishing norms and high levels of compliance (Abdullah et al, 1998). Yet in the short term establishing community organisations and new management rules may require more time from community members, and this may be higher when multiple stakeholders are involved in consensus building.…”