In pursuing their livelihood, fishers develop strategies when faced with changes in regulations and other fishery conditions. Changes involve each individual in a decision‐making process governed by his/her own goals or constraints. Despite this reality, the complex dynamics of fishing has usually been ignored in designing management initiatives, which has contributed to management failures in many parts of the world. Fishers have generally been treated as fixed elements, with no consideration of individual attitudes based on their operating scales (geographical, ecological, social and economic) and personal goals. We review existing research on the social, economic and behavioural dynamics of fishing to provide insight into fisher behaviour and its implications for fisheries management. Emphasis is placed on fisher perception, and how fishers develop dynamic fishing tactics and strategies as an adaptive response to changes in resource abundance, environmental conditions and market or regulatory constraints. We conclude that knowledge of these dynamics is essential for effective management, and we discuss how such information can be collected, analysed and integrated into fisheries assessment and management. Particular emphasis is placed on small‐scale fisheries, but some examples from industrial fleets are provided to highlight similar issues in different types of fisheries.

No abstract

Using Hollander's (1958) idiosyncrasy credit theory of leadership as the theoretical backdrop, we examined when and why organizational leaders escape punitive evaluation for their organizational transgressions. In a sample of 162 full-time employees, we found that leaders who were perceived to be more able and inspirationally motivating were less punitively evaluated by employees for leader transgressions. These effects were mediated by the leaders' LMX (leader-member exchange) with their employees. Moreover, the tendency of leaders with higher LMX to escape punitive evaluations for their transgressions was stronger when those leaders were more valued within the organization. Finally, employees who punitively evaluated their leaders were more likely to have turnover intentions and to psychologically withdraw from their organization. Theoretical and practical implications associated with relatively understudied leader-transgression dynamics are discussed.

The complexity of small-scale fisheries makes it difficult to predict the allocation of fishing effort among alternative target species in mixed fisheries, resulting in limitation for fisheries management. One reason for the difficulty is that fishing effort has been assumed as an aggregate of different components, without consideration of fishers' decisions. In this paper, we use discrete choice models to identify factors involved in fishers' decisions about selecting target species on a daily basis. We analyze catch data, by species and fisher, from three fishing communities of Yucatan, Mexico, to contrast the following models: (i) random selection, (ii) economic motivation, and (iii) changes in resource availability. Our results show that fishers do not operate at random but consider information on resource availability and revenues generated from previous trips before selecting or shifting a target. We compare the results among communities and also use the proposed models to predict changes in fishing effort levels given changes in species price and catch per unit effort. We stress the importance of understanding fishers' behavior when it comes to developing appropriate management policies.

No abstract