The purpose of this paper is to dev

The purpose of this paper is to develop a heuristic model to account for the attachment that many particularly successful fishermen seem to have to their occupation. Many attempts to reduce pressures on the resource by providing alternative sources of income for fishermen have been stymied by this seemingly irrational attachment. For example, it was reported that some fishermen in Nova Scotia were reluctant to sign up for government assistance during a fishery closure because it would require them to give up their licenses (Binkley 2000). Tango-Lowy and Robertson (2002) found that less than one-third (28%) of commercial fishermen interviewed said they were willing to participate in open-ocean aquaculture—an occupation one would expect to provide some of the same satisfactions as the capture fishery. Fishing vessel buyback programs, aimed at reducing pressure in the fishery while providing fishermen with money to shift occupations also fall victim to fishermen’s reluctance to leave fishing. For example, the General Accounting Office estimated in 2000 that some 30% of the participants used the money they received for their boats to buy new boats and equipment (UPI2001). The same report cited a New Bedford fisherman member of the New Bedford Fishermen’s Family Assistance Center as saying that the buyback program actually provided some fishermen with the means to upgrade their fishing operations. Some also used the money to buy fishing permits (Van Zile 2001). Similar responses have been reported for the West Coast (Chambers 2004).