An experimental approach to exploring market responses in small scale fishing communities

• Small-scale fishing communities are increasingly connected to international seafood trade and one way is through exports to a growing global market. Understanding how this connectedness impacts local fishery systems, both socially and ecologically, has become a necessary challenge for fisheries governance. Market prices are a potential mechanism by which global market demands are transferred to small-scale fishery actors, and in most small-scale fisheries this happens through various traders (intermediaries, middlemen/women or patrons). By financing fishing operations, buying and selling products and transferring market information, traders can actively pass international market signals, such as price, to fishers. How these signals influence fishers' decisions and consequent fishing effort is still poorly understood yet significant for future social-ecological sustainability. The paper uses an economic framed field experiment in combination with interviews to shed light on this, in the context of the Philippine patron-client arrangement known as the 'suki system'. Over 250 fishers in Concepcion, Iloilo were in an economic experiment asked to make decisions about fuel loans based on fluctuating market prices. Interviews with participants and their patrons were held to gather information on relevant contextual variables that also could influence financing behaviour such as fisher characteristics and socio-economic conditions. Contrary to our hypotheses, fishers showed no response in their borrowing behaviour to experimental price changes. Instead gender and previous choices in the experiment were predictive of their choice of loans in the experiment and we explore possible reasons for this.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Social och ekonomisk geografi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Social and Economic Geography (hsv//eng)

LANTBRUKSVETENSKAPER  -- Lantbruksvetenskap, skogsbruk och fiske (hsv//swe)

AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES  -- Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Global seafood trade

behavioural economic experiments

gender

patron-client relationship

Philippines

market prices

Sustainability Science

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