Charter Fishing in Hawaii: A Multi-Region Analysis of the Economic Linkages and Contributions Within and Outside Hawaii

The survey reached out to 207 charter vessel operators, with a response rate of 36 percent and collected demographic, trip, catch, and economic information across islands and vessel sizes. Four separate county models are built to observe regional effects and one state model to observe total state effects. The state model is linked to secondary regions (the mainland West Coast made up of Oregon, California, and Washington, as well as the rest of the mainland United States) to observe the economic effects occurring outside the state of Hawaii. This is especially relevant to Hawaii because of its dependence on the mainland to supply many of its raw materials and finished products. The multi-region approach allows us to observe spillover effects (effects occurring in the secondary regions in response to a demand in the study region) and feedback effects (further effects that occur in the study region as a result of purchasing goods and services by the secondary regions). The results from this multi-region model method are more informative and broad reaching as they capture the spillover and feedback effects that would otherwise be lost as leakages.