Assessing priority of cultural policy-making to mitigate Illegal fishing in Hormozgan coastal waters

Abstract

This study was conducted to determine the priority of socio-cultural aspect on illegal fishing occurrence in Hormozgan province using analytic hierarchy process (AHP) in 2020. First, the hierarchy of performance indicators of illegal fishing occurrence was extracted from previous literature. Hereafter, a hybrid approach, which consisted of two sections namely expert-based (15 experts of the Iranian Fisheries Organization) and fisher-based (15 key informant fishermen who had at least 15 years of work experience), were used to gather the paired comparison data. Samples were selected through snow-ball sampling technique. Data analyses were done by SuperDecision software. According to the experts’ viewpoint, the priorities criteria on illegal fishing occurrence includes economic status (with 48% weight percentage), Area features of Hormozgan province (15.33%), management issues (12.91%), culture (12.28%), and personal skills (11.48%), respectively. Whereas, unemployment (12.73%) and nonchalant perspective to life (2.9%) had the maximum and minimum importance among the sub-criteria. Against, fishermen believed that nearly 60% of illegal fishing is occurred because of two criteria namely area features (29.25%) and management issues (27.88%), while the cultural aspect (with 10.92%) has the lowest priority. The results of the present study would be helpful to the executive managers of fisheries in Hormozgan province (or even others) to decision-making and implementing the operational measures to mitigate illegal fishing.

Keywords

• analytic hierarchy process
• persian gulf
• cultural planning
• illegal fishing
• fisheries management