Table 1.— Characteristics of New York resident anglers in the St. Lawrence River- 

 eastern Lake Ontario bass fishery, 1976. 



Table 2.— Characteristics of sites and angler participation in St. Lawrence River-eastern Lake 



Ontario bass fishery, 1976. 



mouth bass anglers were similar in socioeconom- 

 ic characteristics, but the average smallmouth 

 bass angler had more angling experience. Aver- 

 age one-way distance traveled by anglers to the 

 sites varied from 35 mi for the Wayne and Cayuga 

 County sites on Lake Ontario to 171 mi for the 

 St. Lawrence County sites on the St. Lawrence 

 River. Angling success rates were highest at the 

 Jefferson County sites on Lake Ontario. 



The Participation Equation 



There does not appear to be any theoretical 

 justification for a particular functional form of 

 the relationships for estimation (Smith 1975b). 

 Various functional forms of the participation 

 equation (Equation (1)) were estimated. The 

 final form was as follows: 



log (Di 3 + 0.8) = /So + 0i log TC tJ 



+ fo log I, + 3 log PFi 



+ 4 log Si + 05 l0gi4; 



+ 06 log TC lk + e (3) 



where the terms are parameters to be estimated 



and e is the random component. 6 The double log- 

 arithmic model produced more significant pa- 

 rameter estimates and also exhibited greater 

 explanatory power than linear and semilogarith- 

 mic forms, so it was used to derive the estimates 

 for this part of the analysis. 7 



The results for the participation equation 

 (Equation (3)) are presented in Table 3. Because 

 assumptions about monetary and time costs of 

 travel could influence the results, alternative 

 participation equations were estimated using dif- 

 ferent values for these cost components. The re- 

 sults are also shown in Table 3. The effect and 

 significance of the explanatory variables re- 

 mained virtually unchanged, suggesting that 

 confidence can be placed in the results from this 

 stage of the analysis. 



The estimates are consistent with theoretical 

 expectations and are similar for the three fishery 

 specifications. Most of the estimated coefficients 

 were statistically significant at the 1% level and 



6 The quantity, 0.8, in Equation (3) is added to the fee to pre- 

 vent the use of the logarithm of zero. All logarithms are natural 

 logarithms. 



The objective in specifying the participation equation was 

 to obtain reliable estimates of parameters rather than a high 

 R 2 (Gum and Martin 1975). Other studies that have used the 

 double log format are Grubb and Goodwin (1968). Smith 

 (1975b), and Smith and Kopp(1980). 



171 



