Fishing Rights and Supply of Salmon Angling Tourism in Mid‐Norway

Abstract

A limited number of studies have focused on angling from a tourism perspective. The objective of this study was to investigate the objectives of landowners regarding their rights for salmon fishing, including landowners’ supply of fishing services to the tourism market. The data originate from a questionnaire survey of 712 landowners in four rivers in the Trondheim Fjord region of Norway. The heterogeneity of the landowner group with differences in fishing right and property characteristics, as well as landowner characteristics seemed to explain some of the large variation in objective scores about use of the fishing right as indicated by the standard regression models. This study also indicated that how landowners use their fishing rights affected yield per kg of salmon caught, with landowners selling angling as packages with a restricted number of rods and with additional services on average having the highest mean net income per kg of salmon with 991 NOK. The results tell policy makers that successful cooperation in salmon fishing management and conservation of salmon stocks must be based on an understanding of the multiple objectives of the heterogeneous landowner group.

Key Words:

• Salmon angling
• landowner
• nature tourism
• fishing rights
• objectives

Acknowledgments

I thank Sjur Baardsen and Øystein Aas for commenting on and discussing the manuscript and input on research design, F.S. Chapin, III for commenting on the manuscript, Brian Young for comments on the regression model, Rebecca Young for commenting on the language, and Anton Bjartnes at Origokart for providing the map. The two editors, plus three anonymous reviewers made remarks that greatly helped in improving the final paper. I thank them. This study is part of a research and development project funded by the Research Program Area and Nature‐based Industrial Development (AREAL) under the Research Council of Norway. Verdal Vekst contributed financially too. The landowner organization the Trondheim Fjord Rivers owns the project and has also contributed financially. Research and development partners in the project are the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and Norwegian Institute of Nature Research (NINA). The project aims to foster sustainable management of wild salmon stocks in the Trondheim Fjord region in both ecological and socio‐economic terms.

Notes

1. Landowner in this article refers to the term non‐industrial private riparian landowner unless otherwise stated. This is similar to the term non‐industrial private forest owner (NIPF) widely used in the forestry literature (Kuuluvainen, Karppinen, & Ovaskainen, 1996).

2. The fishing rights follow the property. An individual property can in some instances have several owners, what is referred to as “personlig sameie” (Korsvolla, Steinsholt, & Sevatdal, 2004). This is not to be confused with common property regime (“realsameie”) where several property units own one right together. Sevatdal (2006) calls this “farm commons”.

3. Fishing rights were measured as the length in meters on one side of the river. The reason why both sides were not included is that well‐functioning beats in the main stem of the river often control fishing on one side only. In tributaries and upper parts of the main river, both sides ownership is more common, but fishing is not as good here. Total meters of river bank adding together both sides for each beat was assumed to be inexact as related to the purpose of the measure which was to indicate quality of fishing.

4. There were clear indications that some respondents had confused this question with the question of how many landowners there were in their beat arrangement. A beat arrangement is a voluntary agreement between landowners where they merge several fishing rights to be presented to the angler as a single fishing unit; the beat.