Catalyzing sustainable fisheries management through behavior change interventions

Abstract

Small-scale fisheries are an important livelihood and primary protein source for coastal communities in many of the poorest regions in the world, yet many are overfished and thus require effective and scalable management solutions. Positive ecological and socioeconomic responses to management typically lag behind immediate costs borne by fishers from fishing pressure reductions necessary for fisheries recovery. These shortterm costs challenge the long-term success of these interventions. However, social marketing may increase perceptions of management benefits before ecological and socioeconomic benefits are fully realized, driving new social norms and ultimately long-term sustainable behavior change. By conducting underwater visual surveys to quantify ecological conditions and by conducting household surveys with community members to quantify their perceptions of management support and socioeconomic conditions, we assessed the impact of a standardized small-scale fisheries management intervention that was implemented across 41 sites in Brazil, Indonesia, and the Philippines. The intervention combines TURF reserves (community-based territorial use rights for fishing coupled with no-take marine reserves) with locally tailored social-marketing behavior change campaigns. Leveraging data across 22 indicators and 4 survey types, along with data from 3 control sites, we found that ecological and socioeconomic impacts varied and that communities supported the intervention and were already changing their fishing practices. These results suggest that communities were developing new social norms and fishing more sustainably before long-term ecological and socioeconomic benefits of fisheries management materialized.

Taking a more nuanced look at behavior change for demand reduction in the illegal wildlife trade

“…For example, the benefits of reducing rhino horn consumption mostly accrue to rhinos, whereas the loss of status accrue to the former user. Thus, demand reduction interventions have to rely more on emphasizing costs or changing social norms by altering what the audience considers typical or appropriate behavior, and so are less able to focus on direct personal benefits (McDonald et al, 2020;Veríssimo, 2019).…”

Challenges in the impact evaluation of behaviour change interventions: The case of sea turtle meat and eggs in São Tomé

“…Instead it should catalyse greater effort into developing approaches to bridge that divide. For example, using structural equation models to explore pathways between different factors in a theory of change can help better understand the linkages between different indicator types (McDonald et al., 2020). We must remember that conservation is not just about documenting biodiversity declines; it ought to help safeguard it also (Williams et al., 2020).…”

“…compliance with sustainable fishery management practices) to actual conservation impacts (e.g. recovery of fish populations; McDonald et al., 2020). This requires interdisciplinary expertise, with knowledge of both social and biological processes and a detailed understanding of conceptual linkages within complex systems (Ferraro et al., 2019; Margoluis et al., 2009).…”

Biodiversity conservation as a promising frontier for behavioural science

“…This research tradition has tackled issues closely linked to biodiversity conservation and foreshadows many contemporary and interdisciplinary analyses. More recently, social-marketing techniques have been used to tackle a variety of biodiversity problems and their potential is increasingly recognised [46][47][48][49][50] . For example, a recent study in the Philippines, Indonesia and Brazil used locally tailored social-marketing campaigns to shift social norms and increase sustainable fishing among communities of small-scale fisheries 50 .…”

“…More recently, social-marketing techniques have been used to tackle a variety of biodiversity problems and their potential is increasingly recognised [46][47][48][49][50] . For example, a recent study in the Philippines, Indonesia and Brazil used locally tailored social-marketing campaigns to shift social norms and increase sustainable fishing among communities of small-scale fisheries 50 . But while the number of successful applications of behavioural science to biodiversity conservation is increasing, they remain rare and often suffer from methodological limitations 51 .…”