Do Management Systems Foster Social Capital? Empirical Evidence from Japanese Surf Clam Fisheries

We empirically examine the social effect of management systems. We focus on a particular management practice employed in self-governed coastal fisheries in Japan—revenue sharing arrangement. We hypothesize that management systems affect cooperative relationships and information network in a community; broadly termed as social capital. We quantified social capital using controlled economic experiments with fisherman subjects as well as surveys. Using wild cluster bootstrap for small sample inference, we find evidence of the positive effect of revenue sharing on information network possibly because revenue sharing arrangement provides disincentives to compete and accompanies synchronized collective fishing operation. Interestingly, revenue sharing fishers are no more likely to cooperate unconditionally (i.e., unilaterally) and furthermore they are less likely to cooperate conditionally (i.e., only if others cooperate).