Stakeholder Influence and Optimal Regulations: A Common-Agency Analysis of Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Regulations

One aspect of ecosystem-based management is to include new stakeholders. When an environmental NGO (ENGO) gets a say in the fisheries management, this will affect the authorities' optimal regulation. Combining a principal-agent model and a steady-state bioeconomic model, we show that under symmetric information the authorities will moderate their use of regulation as a response to the ENGO's increased influence. However, the aggregate of the authorities' and the ENGO's regulations will be stronger. On introducing asymmetric information, the regulation of the high-cost fishers relative to the low-cost fishers is weaker than under a single principal.