What makes anglers happy: A sentiment analysis of Walleye angler forums in the United States

Abstract

Angler attitudes and behavior are important factors in fisheries management, but time consuming and expensive to quantify. Analyzing the text that anglers contribute to online forums may be a fast and cost‐effective alternative. We applied sentiment analysis to almost 3 years of management‐related posts on online angling forums to estimate the long‐term satisfaction of walleye (Sander vitreus) anglers in nine U.S. states. Sentiment varied four‐fold among states. Consistent with the literature, our random forest model found that sentiment increased with angler density, bag limit, and season length. Relatively unimportant factors were fishing license cost, the frequency of special walleye regulations, the degree to which management agencies communicated with anglers through social media, and the importance of angling to the state economy. Our results support the hypothesis that online text can provide insight into the satisfaction of anglers who post on online forums. Future research should explore social listening as a low‐cost method for tracking angler satisfaction at finer spatial and temporal scales, and for other game fishes. This work contributes to a growing interest in exploring and validating the use of online data within systems of harvest management and governance.