Fisheries Research
tSome recommendations made by the World Parks Congress in Durban (2003) underscore the need toconsider the impacts of multi-purpose marine protected areas (MPAs) on resident or adjacent popula-tions, and lead social and fisheries scientists to reconsider their approaches and methods regarding theassessment of economic effects of an MPA. This paper contributes to this reconsideration by proposingan assessment method of microeconomic effects. The approach is the comparison of fishing households’economic situation in Chumphon Province (Thailand) at a given time based on their location in relation toa marine protected area: within or adjacent to Chumphon Archipelago Marine National Park vs. remotefrom it. We address three economic dimensions: the profitability of household activities, the income-distributional effects among households and the household vulnerability. This assessment requires thecalculation of five indicators: the net income, the net profit margin, the Gini coefficient and the Herfindahlindex, and Bene’s vulnerability index. From a dataset made up of 123 fishing households surveyed twicea year, the main results show higher incomes and less economic vulnerability for households locatedwithin or adjacent to the MPA, and a more inegalitarian income distribution among households locatedremote from the MPA. So, the households located within or adjacent to the MPA have more security,can stay focused on the most profitable fishing activities and not have to diversify outside of the fishingsector. In an environment where commercial small-scale fishing was already highly developed, settingup an MPA could have the effect of sustaining an efficient, specialised professional set-up for fishinghouseholds in the area concerned. With respect to a policy to establish MPAs in keeping with the Dur-ban recommendations, this study shows that a thorough analysis of profitability, income distributionand economic vulnerability should help to identify who the winners and losers might be, which couldimprove the targeting of mitigation and compensation measures.