Measuring Subjective and Objective Well-being: Analyses from Five Marine Commercial Fisheries

Abstract

Well-being is an important indicator of how participants in an industry are doing. Since the 1970s, anthropologists have been developing and utilizing as an indicator, along with identifying the advantages and disadvantages of such a metric. Building on this experience, a index is useful if it (1) is easily developed from available data; (2) enables temporal and spatial comparisons; (3) can be applied at multiple scales; and (4) possesses subjective and objective elements. The subjective element reflects how individuals and members of occupational communities perceive their situation. Using five case studies of North American marine commercial fisheries, an approach to representing subjective and objective measures of well-being is illustrated and evaluated. These studies show that commercial fishing has historically been a highly valued occupation from both subjective and objective perspectives. However, the status of commercial fishing has been in a state of decline over the pa...