Urbanization and recreational fishing participation: The case of Ontario resident fishing license holders

Abstract Objective Increasing concentrations of people in urban areas are associated with stagnating or declining recreational fishing participation rates. We assessed how differences in resource quality, human population composition, leisure availability, and constraints between urban and rural environs help to explain why fishing participation rates are depressed in urban areas. Methods We used resident fishing license data from Ontario, Canada, for the periods before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic and classified urbanization by rural and small, medium, large, and very large urban area designations. Using a deductive approach, we evaluated support for each of the four hypotheses (resource quality, human population composition, leisure availability, and constraints) at explaining depressed fishing rates. Results Recreational fishing participation temporarily increased during the pandemic, especially among females, younger people, and residents of large cities. Despite the increase, longstanding gaps between more rural and urban participation persisted. For example, residents of small urban centers were 7.6 and 6.6 times more likely to participate before and during the pandemic than residents of very large urban centers. Conclusions Often-cited hypotheses, such as poorer urban fishing quality or compositional changes to human populations, could not have changed fast enough to explain the participation response by urbanites. Therefore, the rise and fall of fishing participation during the pandemic were driven by greater reductions to leisure substitute activities and structural constraints for urban residents. The remaining gap in rates among more urban and rural populations, however, implies that differences in fishing quality and/or the composition of populations likely are the strongest drivers of the negative effect of urbanization on participation.