**Fish or Flight: The Role of Accident Risk in Commercial Fishing Trip Duration (JMP)**
Note: This paper includes administrative data that is protected under a data-use agreement. Please email me at vasant at oregonstate dot edu for a copy of the draft.
Firms face many competing incentives when managing accident risk in the workplace. This is especially true in industries where accident risk is closely related to a firm’s production choices, as is the case in commercial fishing. This paper examines vessels’ short-run decisions in response to increasing current and future period wave and swell heights that increase worker accident risk. Using high-resolution vessel positioning data paired with fishing outcome and weather data, I estimate an empirical model that captures the underlying production process in the Oregon commercial Dungeness crab fishery. The analysis reveals that the current management instruments used to manage the fishery sustainably also create incentives for vessels to increase their exposure to hazards when fishing conditions are more hazardous than average. Additionally, the results indicate that vessels behave rationally and decrease their exposure to hazards, although the threshold at which this occurs is typically higher than the thresholds and safety standards established by regulators. These results suggest that vessels are anticipatory and go on longer fishing trips when conditions are expected to worsen, but do eventually choose to reduce their exposure to accident risk. This paper is the first in the literature to empirically estimate how firms respond to hazard exposure during production. The results highlight the need for improved comanagement of safety and biological endpoints in industries with high environmental hazards, such as fishing, forestry, mining, and agriculture.
