37 



possibly a sufficient incentive to obtain the sample required. Payment of 

 the fee could be conditional on the completed questionnaire being of accept- 

 able quality. There are numerous possible ambiguities which can exist in 

 the best of questionnaires. To discover these the program should include 

 random personal interviews and analyses of business records. It should also 

 include an extension education effort based on analyses of questionnaires so 

 that respondents receive managerial assistance based on comparative analyses 

 of business performance. In these ways a costs and earnings information 

 program generates reciprocal benefits for the Regional Councils and for 

 questionnaire respondents. 



While the questionnaire with incentive approach to obtaining cost and 

 earnings data has much merit there are disadvantages. For example, such a 

 program may obtain good information from full time, commercial fishermen but 

 a poor response from part timers and/or commercial fishermen who move between 

 fisheries seasonally. For this reason, supplemental surveys of these fisher- 

 men may be necessary to obtain a valid description of the harvest sector. 

 This problem of bias may be particularly severe for some of the smaller 

 inshore fishermen. 



Cd) Vessel construction costs 



In discussing costs and returns studies it was noted that asset valua- 

 tion poses some problems and that ideally one should have book value, market 

 value and replacement cost measures. It is desirable therefore to have a 

 data series on capital cost construction for new vessels entering fisheries. 

 With such information it would be possible to project economic returns for 

 new vessels by meshing costs and returns information for recently constructed 

 vessels with current capital construction costs for new vessels. Such re- 

 turns can differ radically from average returns from samples for a fleet as 



