Abstract
The UK’s fishing industry has contracted considerably since 1972 due to overfishing, increased fuel prices, and implementation of the European Union (EU) Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). Despite this decline affecting the industry at large and the incomes of fishers, some fishers have carried on, or even freshly started or returned to the business. Why have these fishers done so despite the challenges they encounter in the fishing industry? In this article, we investigate why some fishers still choose to fish in the wake of all the EU regulations designed to control overfishing by reducing the size of the industry and discouraging entry by taking measures that affect revenues. Our data are collected through ethnographic research involving participant observation and interviews with fishers in North Shields, England. Based on our findings, we argue that the decision to carry on fishing, or even to return, is predominantly based on so-called intrinsic motivations, rather than on cost-benefit calculations, and stems from three interlinked basic human emotional needs which fishing seems to fulfil: the need to connect (sometimes also defined as the need to relate or belong); the desire for autonomy; and the desire to show competence (and have that competence recognized by relevant others). As such, the findings offer a fresh way to explain fishers’ decisions, based on a deliberated choice, to remain or leave the sector, and to understand and interrogate the challenges confronting present-day fishing both on a local level in the UK and also for Europe at large.
Highlights
It is mid-April 2019, a pretty good time of the year for fishing
In the remainder of this article, we investigate the motivations of the fishers in North Shields by applying selfdetermination theory, enriched with the notions of habitus and doxa, as outlined above, as the frame of analysis
Most of the existing studies that point to fishers taking a costbenefit approach to decision-making, acting as a kind of “homo economicus” and choosing on rational grounds to leave or stay in the sector, do not provide a helpful framework for understanding why not all the fishers left the fishing industry in the wake of the hindering European Union (EU) fishing regulations
Summary
It is mid-April 2019, a pretty good time of the year for fishing. In North Shields, most of the boats have already been put to sea but Danny’s1 boat is still at the quay. In this article, we investigate the motivations of fishers to fish and to continue fishing notwithstanding the regulations designed to discourage them, and the fact that the revenues are often low, declining, or less than the salaries offered by other jobs, jobs they could opt for, and perhaps would do if their decisions were based purely on an economic cost-benefit calculation. Since the social psychologists Ryan and Deci first developed their so-called self-determination theory (SDT) in the 1980s, they have consistently argued and convincingly shown that motivations that make people act are intrinsic, i.e., internal, based on a sense of inherent interest and joy, and not, or at least far less, because of extrinsic stimuli, such as the promise of financial rewards or profit. In the remainder of this article, we investigate the motivations of the fishers in North Shields by applying selfdetermination theory, enriched with the notions of habitus and doxa, as outlined above, as the frame of analysis
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