Levels and drivers of fishers' compliance with marine protected areas
By A. Arias, J. Cinner, Rhondda Jones, R. Pressey. 2015
119 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Effective conservation depends largely on people's compliance with regulations. We investigate compliance through the lens of fishers' compliance with marine protected areas (MPAs). MPAs are widely used tools for marine conservation and fisheries management. Studies show that compliance alone is a strong predictor of fish biomass within MPAs. Hence, fishers' compliance is critical for MPA effectiveness. However, there are few empirical studies showing what factors influence fishers' compliance with MPAs. Without such information, conservation planners and managers have limited opportunities to provide effective interventions. By studying 12 MPAs in a developing country (Costa Rica), we demonstrate the role that different variables have on fishers' compliance with MPAs. Particularly, we found that compliance levels perceived by resource users were higher in MPAs (1) with multiple livelihoods, (2) where government efforts against illegal fishing were effective, (3) where fishing was allowed but regulated, (4) where people were more involved in decisions, and (5) that were smaller. We also provide a novel and practical measure of compliance: a compound variable formed by the number illegal fishers and their illegal fishing effort. Our study underlines the centrality of people’s behavior in nature conservation and the importance of grounding decision making on the social and institutional realities of each location.
Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6465f827fb3fdc18f805cb1d1ea175057ffac062
How researchers see this paper
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In Ecology
In Global and Planetary Change
- T. Morrison
- R. Turner
- E. Milner‐Gulland
- A. Arias
- R. Tobin
- Nadine Marshall
- J. Addison
- Brock J. Bergseth
In Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
- T. Morrison
- R. Turner
- E. Milner‐Gulland
- A. Arias
- R. Tobin
- Nadine Marshall
- J. Addison
- Brock J. Bergseth
Citations in the corpus
- The neglected complexities of shark fisheries, and priorities for holistic risk-based management (2019, background): “…obligations can 249 be a factor driving fisher behaviour, uptake of technical measures and compliance with regulations 250 depend on a wide range of factors, which are often context-specific (Arias, 2015; Arias, Cinner, Jones, 251 & Pressey, 2015; Campbell & Cornwell, 2008; Hall et al., 2007).”
- Trust, confidence, and equity affect the legitimacy of natural resource governance (2016, background): “Though legitimacy is likely to be an important factor influencing decisions about compliance, this relationship is not necessarily linear (Arias et al. 2015).”