Seafood availability and geographical distance: Evidence from Chinese seafood restaurants

Abstract

Consideration of spatial distance friction is important for ensuring that marine services and productivity are not misused. Based on data from Chinese seafood restaurants, this study constructed a distance decay model to identify the spatial trends and changes in seafood availability at different geographical distances. The results show that the distribution of seafood restaurants from coastal to inland areas has the characteristics of a core periphery circle structure, with the core concentration area, the diffusion area, and the boundary of seafood availability being 50–350 km, 350–1200 km, and more than 1200 km, respectively, from the coastline to inland. Additionally, we found that seafood availability has the characteristics of distance decay, with the best distance decay function to identify the number and density distributions of restaurants being the square exponential and exponential models (their spatial friction coefficients are −3.450e-7 and -0.002, respectively). In the pure distance model, coastal proximity and distance decay jointly restrict the geographical scope of seafood availability. Coastal proximity leads to the rapid decay of seafood restaurant distribution, and distance decay makes the distribution of seafood restaurants more centralized. Our research can provide some reference for solving the scalar dilemma of fisheries, fishery management, and spatial planning.