Valuing water quality changes using a bioeconomic model of a coastal recreational fishery

This paper develops and applies a structural bioeconomic model of a coastal recreational fishery. We combine a dynamic fish population model, a statistical model of angler catch rates, and a recreation demand model to estimate the value of water quality changes for the Atlantic Coast summer flounder fishery. The model predicts that improving water quality conditions in Maryland's coastal bays alone would have relatively small impacts on the fishery as a whole. However, water quality improvements throughout the range of the species could lead to substantial increases in fish abundance and associated benefits to recreational anglers from increased catch rates. We also estimate an alternative version of the catch function, with no direct measure of fish abundance included, and we compare results from this “reduced form” approach to results from our structural model.