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A hurdle model separately models whether a count is zero and, conditional on being positive, uses a zero-truncated count distribution. Unlike zero inflation, the positive-count component cannot generate zeros.

Introduce a latent Bernoulli distribution indicator $A_i$, with $A_i=1$ denoting a structural zero and $\mathrm{Pr}(A_i=1)=\pi$. Conditional on $A_i=0$, retain the negative binomial regression with ${\lambda }_i=e^{x_i^T\beta }$ and $x_i=(1,d_i{)}^T$. This gives a zero-inflated negative binomial model:A participant who fishes may still catch zero, so an observed zero does not reveal the latent class. This distinguishes zero inflation from a hurdle model, which truncates the count component at zero. The marginal expectation becomes $(1-\pi ){\lambda }_i$, and the law of total variance givesA constant $\pi$ is a parsimonious starting model. If there is evidence that nonparticipation changes with day or other recorded predictors, use logistic regression for ${\pi }_i$ instead. Conditional independence of visitors remains an assumption; extra zeros alone do not establish its validity.

Zero inflation augments a count distribution with an additional mass at zero. An observed zero can arise either from the structural-zero component or from the ordinary count component; the latent source is not observed.