Modelling Fishery Landings Locations and Product Forms

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The main objective of this project is to investigate fishers´ choice of landing location, and to what extent they process the fish on the trip to the landing location given their catch for the Norwegian whitefish sector. The first step in this analysis is to obtain knowledge about to what extent prices vary due to vessel and gear type, product forms and fish size and landing location using hedonic price analysis. The main analysis in the project will be to estimate a discrete-choice model addressing the f ishers´ choice of landing location and product form given the catch and other decision relevant factors such as time of the year, vessel type, price, regulations, total quota, distances, weather, relationships with specific landing locations etc. This is an important addition to the general literature that has tended to focus on where to fish with which gear and what species to target, but that has paid limited attention to what happens with the fish after it has been brought onboard. We are able to condu ct this analysis because we have access to a unique data set from the Norwegian Rawfish Organization, which in addition to the information normally contained on landing notes also contains information with respect to the product form in which the fish wer e landed and where it was landed. As we have knowledge about the landing locations, we can also analyze the results from the landing location perspective to obtain information about what makes some landing locations successful, while other lose share over time. Given the introduction of individual vessel quotas for the coastal fleet in the middle of our sample, we can also investigate whether landing patterns were influenced by this dramatic regulatory change. This provides knowledge with respect to what constitute competitive seafood value chains in coastal communities.