Irish coarse and game anglers' preferences for fishing site attributes

Knowing which site attributes have relevance for anglers is valuable information for fishery managers seeking to improve angler satisfaction and manage fish stocks. Recreation demand models typically have limited information about site attributes and in many instances is limited to just a few measures for each site. We assemble a recreational angling dataset with extensive information on site attributes and model angling demand to ascertain the importance of attributes in decisions on trip duration. However, we find that only a small number of site attributes are important determinants of trip duration, including attributes such as ease of physical access, availability of guiding services, specimen fish, and 'catch & release' status. We also find that importance of site attributes differs by target species. The key site attributes influencing trip duration of anglers targeting coarse species (i.e. non-salmonid) are good physical access or availability of specimen fish, with trip duration to such sites one day longer, on average. Key site attributes for anglers targeting salmonid game species are the availability of guiding services and whether the fishery is regulated as 'catch & release'. On average, anglers' trip duration is a half day less in 'catch & release' fisheries.