The effects of property and landowner characteristics on profit efficiency in salmon angling tourism in Norway

Abstract

This paper analyzes how different property and landowner characteristics and other factors affect landowners’ profit efficiency from salmon angling tourism. The paper helps correct a lack of studies on the economic aspects of the triple bottom line approach to sustainability and suggests new areas of rural tourism research. A stochastic profit frontier function with an inefficiency module was estimated based on survey responses from 203 landowners along four Mid-Norway rivers. Profit efficiency decreased as the revenues from off-property and on-property activities increased relative to angling tourism. Factors increasing efficiency were long-term renting of fishing instead of permit sale or selling fishing packages with additional services and common property ownership instead of simple fee ownership. Cooperation, by merging several fishing rights into one unit rather than fishing on a single property basis, decreased efficiency. This study did not distinguish between different forms of cooperation; mandatory cooperation in the form of common property and voluntary cooperation between private properties are issues for further research. If sustainable economic efficiency is a public goal, policies should ensure a predictable economic environment for landowners specializing in salmon angling tourism and promote long-term renting, with a 10-year minimum period for the lease of fishing rights.

地产和土地所有者的特点对挪威鲑鱼垂钓旅游活动中的利润效益产生的影响

该文章分析了不同的地产和土地所有者的特性和其他因素是如何影响土地所有者从鲑鱼垂钓旅游活动中取得的利润效益的。文章帮助纠正了在可持续性的三大基本原则中对经济方面的不足研究，并建议了乡村旅游研究的新领域。通过在四条挪威中部河流附近的203位土地所有者进行调查，文章估测出推测效益的功能并不是很有效。利润效益缩减是因为与垂钓旅游相关的地产以内和以外的活动创造的收入上升了。而能够提升效益的因素是长期垂钓的租金，而不是通过卖许可和卖垂钓的外加服务得到的收入；还有是因为一般地产拥有权，而不是简单的所有权费用。通过融合多个垂钓权的合作而不是单单在一个地方垂钓，反而降低了有效性。该研究没有区分不同形式的合作；在大众地产的形式中的委任和合作和私有地产中自主的合作是今后研究的问题。如果可持续性经济效益是一个公众目标，政策应该明确创造一个为土地所有者能专职在鲑鱼垂钓旅游活动，和促进至少10年期的钓鱼权租赁的长期租金收取的，可以预测的经济环境。

Keywords:

• economic sustainability
• fishing
• natural resources management
• nature-based tourism
• property rights
• rural tourism

关键词:

• 自然为基准的旅游
• 乡村旅游
• 钓鱼
• 地产所有权
• 自然资源管理
• 经济可持续性

Acknowledgements

This study was part of a research and development project funded by the research program on Nature-based industry (NATUROGNÆRING) under the Research Council of Norway (grant no. 173869/I10). The landowner organization, the Trondheim Fjord Rivers, owned the project and contributed financially. The Norwegian University of Life Sciences and the Norwegian Institute of Nature Research were research partners in the project. The project aimed to foster sustainable management of wild salmon stocks in the Trondheim Fjord region in both ecological and socioeconomic terms. We thank Øystein Aas for input on research design, and Shana Loshbaugh for commenting on the language. The authors also thank the editor for inputs that greatly helped in improving this paper. The authors wish to acknowledge the ideas contributed to this paper by an as yet unpublished paper on “Vogel: Failing One Line in the Triple Bottom Line for Sustainable Tourism” by the late Neil Leiper of the Southern Cross University, New South Wales, Australia, and Erica Wilson, also from the Southern Cross University. Vogel is a backpackers’ hostel in Indonesia. We thank Anton Bjartnes at Origokart for kindly providing a map of the Trondheim fjord area for use in this article.

Notes

1. Landowners in this paper refer to owners of fishing rights, being small-scale private riparian landowners, unless otherwise stated. This is equivalent to small-scale forest owners, sometimes referred to as nonindustrial or family forest owners (Harrison, Herbohn, & Niskanen, 2002).

2. The fishing right follows the property. An individual property can in some instances have several owners, referred to as personal co-ownership (Korsvolla, Steinsholt, & Sevatdal, 2004), not to be confused with common property regime (joint ownership of land) where several property units own one right together. Sevatdal (2006) calls this “farm commons”.

3. A beat is a length of river or bank, let or fished as a unit for angling (McLay & Gordon-Rogers, 1997). Landowners often pool several fishing rights to make one single beat.

4. Because the profit function is linearly homogenous in all prices (inputs and outputs), we may choose any price as a numeraire. We have chosen the output price. Thus, the gross income from salmon angling tourism is implicit in our formulation.

5. If an angler goes fishing for a single day, that is one fishing day, regardless for how long he or she fishes that day. Thirty-thousand anglers fishing an average of 10 days each equals 300,000 fishing days.