Fishery policy and job satisfaction in three southeast Asian fisheries

By R. Pollnac, R. Pomeroy, I. Harkes. 2001

261 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Reduction of fishing effort by providing alternative employment for fishers is a frequently mentioned policy option. This option is based on assumptions that fishing is a dirty, hard, undesirable occupation, hence employment of last resort and that fishers are amongst the poorest of the poor; and that the poor care little about the type of job they have as long as they make enough to live. This paper first examines the quality of evidence supporting these assertions. It then analyses primary data concerning aspects of job satisfaction among small-scale fishers in the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam. The analyses indicate that most fishers would not leave fishing for an alternative occupation, citing income as well as non-income factors for resisting the change. This leads to the conclusion that the above assumptions are not consistent with either the literature or the current analysis. Hence, fishery policy based on these assumptions or the uninformed sponsorship of alternative employment is likely to fail.

Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/acf396208a246fd4f5446819c4fad4b8b73a742c

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Citations in the corpus

The Interplay of Well-being and Resilience in Applying a Social-Ecological Perspective (2012, background): “The latter is reflected in the literature showing, for example, that many fishers choose to be, or to stay, fishers not for financial reasons but for multi-faceted reasons that lead to job satisfaction (Pollnac et al. 2001, Pollnac and Poggie 2008:199).”
Poverty, sustainability and human wellbeing: A social wellbeing approach to the global fisheries crisis (2011, background): “As has been well documented by research on job satisfaction—fishers often have a strong attachment to their occupation, which is driven by more than material benefits (Pollnac et al., 2001; Pollnac and Poggie, 2008).”
Theories and behavioural drivers underlying fleet dynamics models (2012, unknown): “This is despite the growing number of studies which have shown that a range of fisher characteristics may affect observed entry and exit decisions (see e.g. Anderson 1980; Smith 1981; Binkley 1995; Pollnac et al. 2001; Pollnac and Poggie 2006; Marshall et al. 2007).”
Rural livelihoods and poverty reduction policies. (2005, unknown): “Recent studies in Asia and Africa have, however, questioned this view both empirically and theoretically (Teitze et al. 2000; Pollnac et al. 2001; Béné 2003).”