Assessing the relative impact of inland and marine fish production on fishing load capacity factor: Insights for sustainable fisheries management

Promoting environmental sustainability, including the preservation of marine ecosystems, is a shared responsibility that requires the active engagement of diverse stakeholders. Thus, this study aims to find out how fish production in inland and marine areas affects the fishing load capacity factor in India from 1990 to 2022, considering economic growth and renewable energy consumption as additional covariates. For this purpose, the study employs both the Dynamic Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (DYNARDL) simulations and the AutoRegressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bound testing models. The findings reveal a valid long-run relationship for the fishing load capacity factor function. Further, the findings show that inland fish production improves the fishing load capacity factor in the long run, though this effect is statistically insignificant in the short run. In contrast, marine fish production degrades the fishing load capacity in both the short and long run. Similarly, economic growth has significantly reduced the fishing load capacity factor in both time frames. Conversely, renewable energy consumption also shows a long-run negative impact on the fishing load capacity factor, although the short-run effect is insignificant. Therefore, the research findings suggest that the Indian government should prioritize implementing green economic policies for the fisheries sector, including environmental financing and promoting sustainable fishery products not limited to inland fish production but for marine fish production, to improve the fishing load capacity factor.