Measurement and Comparison of Different Dimensions of Sustainable Coastal Fishing Management in Beach Seine Cooperatives in Guilan

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.