significant _increase_ in fishing intensity in the majority of coastal provinces north of Formosa. The positive effect stretches from Quang Ninh to Nam Dinh, the northern-most provinces in the country. While there is a negative spillover in fishing density lingered in the _Formosa_ - adjacent provinces of Nghe An and Thanh Hoa, this effect is negligible and insignificant in terms of fishing prevalence. Taken together, the findings in Figure 6 provide certain suggestive evidence reinforcing our hypothesis for a coping mechanism in fishery pattern: the fishers capable of traveling to uncontaminated fishing zones did likely resort to this option in order to sustain fishing as an income-generating activity.

There are two immediate follow-up questions: (1) among the affected fishers, who were more likely to travel to safe fishing grounds to continue fishing? and (2) from the labor-market standpoint, do fishers respond differently, depending on the possibility of relocation? The pattern in Figure 6 continues to provide empirical evidence. As we already discussed, among – – the four affected provinces, those located upstream in Ha Tinh and Quang Binh were likely to possess better adapting options due to their proximity to the uncontaminated fishing grounds north of Ha Tinh. In contrast, the options for the downstream fishers in Quang Tri and Hue were much more limited: transporting north, especially for those operating small boats and mainly fish near-shore, was much more cost-ineffective due to the distance.<sup>27</sup> Going south to fish near-shore was also not prospective when seafood consumers were also reluctant to purchase products caught in this region, citing the concern with potential southward spillover of the contaminated water. These downstream fishers, then, had to make the hard choices; to stay in fishing, they had to travel more distantly and cost-ineffectively, no matter north- or south-ward.<sup>28</sup> Otherwise, the only other prospect is to obtain secondary jobs away from fishing activities. Indeed, that latter is what we empirically observe in Table 5.

Table 5 presents the ATE estimates for two dependent variables directly related to the labor-market responses: (1) fishery weekly work hours and (2) the probability of having secondary jobs (in the surveyed month). To get at the heterogeneous responses, we continue to split the _Formosa_ -affected sample into upstream (Ha Tinh & Quang Binh) and downstream provinces (Quang Tri & Hue). The empirical results obtained in Table 5 strongly corroborate the overall hypothesis after looking at satellite data. Consistently estimated across – the choices of control groups, the downstream fishers in Quang Tri and Hue those who were likely “trapped” inside the contaminated zone – responded to _Formosa_ by reducing their weekly fishing workload by approximately 29 hours. This massive and significantly es-

> 27 Besides the higher transportation cost, fishers would also have to worry about inflated expenses related to the preservation of seafood’s freshness – a crucial factor of the selling price.

> 28 In terms of traveling to safe zones, these fishers either have to make their ways further down south to Binh Dinh or Phu Yen – areas far away from _Formosa_ , or up to the distant northern zones

20