Developing a port-level economic impact model for Alaska fisheries

Fishery managers are often interested in the economic impacts of a fishery management action at smaller spatial scales such as fishing ports within a BCA; however, no economic impact model has been constructed at the fishing port level due to the difficulty of collecting the expenditure data. Given this limitation, this study describes step-by-step procedures to approximate the economic impacts for a small fishing port for which a full model cannot be developed due to data limitations. Using the port of Dutch Harbor as an example, this study first shows how to decompose the changes in the seafood industries’ expenditures and household income resulting from a hypothetical policy change. Next, this study maps these changes into IMPLAN sectors. Finally, this study applies the changes to a social accounting matrix (SAM) model constructed off of an existing dataset from IMPLAN to calculate the economic impacts.