Sea Bass Angling in Ireland: A Structural Equation Model of Catch and Effort

The relationship between angling effort and catch is well-recognised, in particular, that effort influences catch rates. But increased catch, which can be considered an attribute of fishery quality, may influence effort in terms of number of fishing trips. This suggests bi-directional feedback between catch and effort. In many travel cost applications, little attention has been given to this endogeneity problem. In this paper, we expand the application of structural equation models to address this issue by jointly estimating demand (effort) and catch functions.