Quota proportion of coastal fishery resources based on three weighting schemes: the case of seven coastal cities in Shandong, China

Focusing on seven coastal prefecture-level cities in Shandong, the research employed data on catch volume, social indicators, and efficiency indicators from 2017 to 2023. The weights of these indicators and the corresponding quota proportion for each city were analyzed using three weighting schemes: the Equal Weighting Method, the Kakwani Relative Deprivation Coefficient Method, and the Entropy Weight Method. The fairness of three weighting schemes was evaluated using the Gini coefficient. The results indicated that under the Equal Weighting Method, Yantai City received the highest quota proportion (26.90%), while Dongying City received the lowest (6.80%). Under the Kakwani Relative Deprivation Coefficient Method, Yantai City again received the highest allocation (37.09%), and Dongying City the lowest (3.72%). Compared to the Equal Weighting Method, this scheme increased quota shares for Yantai and Weihai by 10.18 and 3.97 percentage points, respectively, while reducing the shares of the other cities, with Binzhou City experiencing the largest decrease (6.85 percentage points). Under the Entropy Weight Method, Weihai City received the highest quota proportion (30.29%), and Dongying City the lowest (5.45%). Relative to the Equal Weighting Method, Weihai's share increased the most (+5.54 percentage points), while Binzhou City's share decreased the most (–3.80 percentage points). Fairness analysis based on the Gini coefficient showed that all three weighting schemes resulted in coefficients below 0.2. The allocation derived from the Entropy Weight Method yielded the smallest Gini coefficient (0.097), indicating the highest level of fairness among the three schemes. Under this optimal scheme, the weights for the catch volume, social, and efficiency indicators were 0.436, 0.406, and 0.158, respectively. The corresponding quota proportions for the cities were as follows: Qingdao 12.91%, Dongying 5.45%, Yantai 27.31%, Weifang 7.39%, Weihai 30.29%, Rizhao 9.60%, and Binzhou 7.05%. Based on these proportions, the approximate fishing quotas for the seven coastal cities were estimated as: Qingdao 220.4 thousand tons, Dongying 93.0 thousand tons, Yantai 466.1 thousand tons, Weifang 126.2 thousand tons, Weihai 516.9 thousand tons, Rizhao 163.9 thousand tons, and Binzhou 120.3 thousand tons. This study can provide insights for marine fisheries management.