Challenges associated with implementing discriminatory pricing: the case of international tourist anglers in New Zealand

ABSTRACT

With growing numbers of tourist-angler arrivals globally it is increasingly important to understand how factors such as licence price may impact anglers’ destination choice, and how this may differ among different source markets. Little research has focused on the impacts of discriminatory licencing systems where non-resident anglers are charged a higher fee than resident anglers. This study reports on a survey of 749 non-resident anglers in New Zealand, and explores how they have reacted to the recent introduction of a non-resident surcharge. We investigate perceived licence value within a discriminatory pricing regime, exploring behavioural and socio-demographic variables, and underlying beliefs that influence this. Findings suggest that changes to the licence fee can have some effect on angler perceptions of value and intentions to revisit. Importantly, angler reactions are not uniform, varying according to origin and angler profile. We explore and discuss the possible management implications of this heterogeneity for the application of discriminatory pricing in angling tourism.

KEYWORDS:

• Dual pricing
• discriminatory pricing
• angling
• fishing
• non-resident
• tourist
• licence fee
• fisheries management
• New Zealand

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by Fish and Game New Zealand's Otago Region.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Brent Lovelock is a Professor in the Department of Tourism and Co-Director of the Centre for Recreation Research at the University of Otago. His research focuses on the ethics and sustainability of nature based recreation and tourism.

Stuart Hayes is a PhD candidate in the Department of Tourism at the University of Otago. He has an interest in nature based recreation with a focus on angling.

Notes

1 There are approximately 160,000 licensed domestic anglers.

2 Based on a 95% confidence level and 5% margin of error the minimum sample required was 336 (Krejcie & Morgan, 1970).

3 >100% as some comments were both positive and negative.

4 FGNZ data show that the number of whole season non-resident licences sold actually increased from 4709 in 2014/15 to 6145 in 2016/17, 6508 in 2017/18, and 7153 in 2018/2019.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fish and Game New Zealand (Otago Region).