State dependence and heterogeneity in fishing location choice

To explore the distinction between state dependence and heterogeneity in repeated decisions, this paper combines a Mixed Logit model with a state dependence parameterization from the marketing literature to study fishing location choices of commercial sea urchin divers in California. It examines implications of ignoring either effect and finds in all cases that true state dependence is an important determinant of location choice. Consequently, spatial policies like marine reserves can lead to differences in the short- and long-run behavioral responses of the fishing fleet. Under some specifications, random preference parameters are statistically significant when state dependence is excluded from the model, but when it is included, random preference parameters are not significant. In other specifications, including state dependence only dampens the variability in preference parameters. These results highlight the importance of gathering and analyzing diary-type data for commercial fisheries as well as for similar choice problems in recreation demand.