Survey-based approach to generate regional multipliers for the Indonesian tropical tuna fisheries

Abstract

This study applies surveys of business and household expenditure to draw inferences about the size of regional multipliers to assess the cascading economic impacts of the data-limited Indonesian tropical tuna fishery. The average business-level production multiplier was estimated at around 1.3 across survey respondents, while household-level consumption effects were considerably higher, with the total economic effect roughly three times larger than the production value. A statistical analysis using generalized additive models suggests that there is considerable difference in production multipliers across regions, driven by the individual characteristics of operators, such as revenue/profit, size of the boat, type of gear, and the class of the port where the business is located. This research has the potential to provide a practical management tool to measure flow-on economic impacts of a fishery when information necessary for more formal economic analysis is unavailable, such as for data-limited fisheries or small regional studies.