Abstract:
Sustainable coastal fishing management includes dif
ferent components and factors. One of
the practical initiatives to achieve sustainability
is to evaluate or measure different criteria of
sustainability and measuring sustainability of each
system needs its own indicators. This study
aimed to investigate different criteria of sustaina
ble coastal fishing management in Beach Seine
Cooperatives (BSC) in Guilan Province of Iran and t
o analyze different aspects of sustainable
coastal fishing management in the cooperatives. The
statistical populations of the research
were 58 active BSC’s of Guilan Province, 36 of whic
h were determined through formula of
Cochran and were selected randomly. Sampling was do
ne from September 2011 to April
2012.The method used in this research was descripti
ve-survey research and data was gathered
through questionnaires. Reliability of the question
naire was confirmed with Cronbach's Alpha
that was calculated for each of the seven criteria
of the questionnaire (Cronbach's
α
coefficients ranging from 0.78 to 0.93). The constr
uct validity was analyzed with a factorial
analysis of the main components whose applicability
was verified by means of Bartlett’s test of
sphericity and the KMO test (acceptable with values
above 0.6). Technique used in this study
was Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA), a general approa
ch that can analyze complex problems
involving multiple criteria used in sophisticated s
ystems such as fishing. MCA is a decision-
making tool to analyze and evaluate multiple indica
tors under a participatory group decision-
making environment. Seven variable criteria of sust
ainability indicators including ecological,
economic, social, institutional, coastal management
, restocking the reserves, and resource
conservation indicators were investigated. Accordin
g to the results, social sustainability in BSC
cooperatives had the best situation among different
criteria of sustainable coastal fishing
management, while the economic coastal management a
nd resource conservation criteria had
unfavorable status of sustainability.
Keywords:
Multi-criteria analysis techniques, Social sustain
ability, Sustainability indicators.
