ABSTRACT
This chapter explains how people can tell whether or not they are an economical way of improving the fishing. It also explains how to tell whether the expected benefits are greater than the costs, and whether or not a given reef project can be expected to be a better way of improving the fishery than some other project. The chapter addresses the problem of assessing angler benefits, the use of benefit-cost analysis in evaluating artificial reefs as a fisheries management strategy and the role of angler spending in assessing economic impacts. The value of social equity or fairness impacts of a project is particularly difficult and usually ignored. One region’s profits from angler expenditures is another region’s losses. In the final analysis it is the anglers who benefit from angling. Angler benefits are measured by the willingness of anglers to pay for the change in angling quality produced by a reef.
