Hawaii Pelagic Tournament Expenditure Survey: 2018

This study presents an economic and social profile of pelagic fishing tournaments held in Hawaii during 2018, and examines the economic contributions generated by these events to Hawaii, and spillover effects to the United States mainland. This study surveyed 19 pelagic fishing tournament operators (response rate of 95%) in Hawaii and 509 participant teams (response rate of 45%) across the State of Hawaii. Tournament operators provided information on their costs and earnings related to running their fishing tournaments, while participating teams reported their expenditures related to travel and fishing in the tournament, along with information related to their fishing trips, and demographic information. The economic contributions of pelagic tournament fishing in Hawaii were estimated with IMPLAN (a proprietary input-output modeling software) using the costs and expenditures obtained from the completed surveys. This study extended the single-region input-output to include a multi-regional input-output (MRIO) model in order to capture the spillover effects of pelagic tournament fishing in Hawaii to the U.S. mainland and west coast (Washington, Oregon, and California).