The study intends to examine the effects of the fishing license system on fisheries resources in order to reduce the adverse effects of recreational fishing, such as fishery resource reduction and environmental pollution. In doing so, the research question of the study is to determine what factors influence anglers’ willingness to support fishing licenses. Based on the extended theory of planned behavior, we further included explanatory variables such as recreation specialization and motivations besides anglers’attitudes, norms and self-efficacy towards the environment and proposed six research hypotheses. The data were collected through on-site and online surveys in Gwangju and Cheonnam province and a total of 337 effective questionnaires were collected for data analysis. Three different binary logit models were employed with the dependent variable of anglers’willingness to support fishing licenses to assess the effects of explanatory variables. Study results show that social norms, the level of recreation specialization, motivation factors related to environmental experiences positively affected anglers’willingness to support fishing licenses. However, anglers’consumptive orientation attitudes such as catching big fish, motivation factors related to activity general experience preferences and previous fishing experience had negative effects on the dependent variables. Study results indicate that public outreach and education programs are essential to successfully introduce the fishing license system. Managerial and policy-related implications are further discussed to make recreational fishing a more environment-friendly recreational activity. This study investigated the effects of diverse variables derived from anglers’social-psychological characteristics on their support for fishing licenses and suggest diverse policy-related and managerial implications.