Measuring the operational efficiency of fishermen’s associations in Taiwan

The operating efficiency of fishermen’s associations is significant for developing the fishery industry and fishing villages. Since fishermen’s associations have economic, financial, and service sectors, this study evaluates their efficiency through multiactivity data envelopment analysis. In addition to exploring the overall efficiency of each fishermen association, this study further investigates the differences in the operating efficiency of each of the economic, financial, and service sectors. Fishermen’s associations were divided according to their sizes and geographic areas for analyses and comparisons by considering the differences in their organizational scales and fishing activities. In the empirical study, 24 fishermen associations in Taiwan were selected as the research subjects, and the shared inputs of economic, financial, and service sectors were taken to conform to their practical operation. The overall efficiency of fishermen’s associations was affected by their size and mainly varied by economic sector. The research results indicate room for improvement in the overall efficiency of fishermen’s associations, but improving the efficiency of different fishermen’s associations should occur in various sectors.