Small-scale fisheries have been associated with the subjective well-being of coastal communities through their links with culture, identity, and social cohesion. But although fish catches are usually considered the primary ecosystem service that benefits fishers, little is known about how subjective well-being is influenced by the fishing activity itself. Here, we applied the experience sampling method in two small-scale fisheries in Bangladesh to assess the effects of fishing on fishers’ occurrence of positive and negative affect, two measures of subjective well-being. We found that fishing activities were not directly associated with increased momentary affect and that the frequency of positive affect actually decreased as the fishing trip progressed. Furthermore, although very low catches were associated with less positive affect, the highest frequency of positive affect was achieved with relatively small catches. Our results imply that the benefits provided by small-scale fisheries to the momentary subjective well-being of fishers are not strongly related to the actual catching of fish.

小规模渔业通过与文化、身份和社会凝聚力的联系，与沿海社区的主观福祉息息相关。但是，尽管捕鱼量通常被认为是使渔民受益的主要生态系统服务，但人们对捕捞活动本身如何影响主观福祉却知之甚少。在这里，我们在孟加拉国的两个小型渔业中应用了经验抽样方法来评估捕捞对渔民产生积极和消极影响（主观幸福感的两种衡量标准）的影响。我们发现钓鱼活动与瞬时影响的增加没有直接关系，并且随着钓鱼之旅的进行，积极影响的频率实际上有所下降。此外，虽然非常低的捕获量与较少的积极影响相关，但最高频率的积极影响是通过相对较小的捕获量实现的。我们的结果表明，小规模渔业给渔民的暂时主观福祉带来的好处与实际捕捞的鱼量并没有很强的关系。