Impact of Enforcement and Co-Management on Compliance Behavior of Fishermen

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors believed to affect compliance behavior with regard to the zoning regulation of 284 Peninsular Malaysian fishermen. Frequent violation of regulations will have an impact on the demand for protection, and therefore lead to greater expenditure on law enforcement. The theoretical models of compliance behavior tested include the basic deterrent model, which focuses on the certainty and severity of penalty as a key determinant of compliance, and models which integrate economic theory with theories of social psychology to account for legitimacy, deterrence and other motivations expected to influence an individuals' decisions on whether to comply. Policy makers who want to improve compliance face two choices: the first choice is whether to focus only on building staff capacity to detect and correct non-compliance; and the second choice is a combination of the strategies in building staff capacity and at the same time building commitment among fishermen so that they will comply with the regulations. The results of the empirical analysis provide evidence of the relationship between co-management strategies on the one hand, and types of fishermen on the other. These findings imply that co-management activities should be strengthened to complement the deterrent strategies in the management of fishery resources in Peninsular Malaysia.

Do Social Networks Influence Small-Scale Fishermen’s Enforcement of Sea Tenure?

“…In the case of illegal fishing, while a fisherman may limit his fishing to the legal grounds (compliance), he may not go so far as to prevent and confront others from fishing in restricted areas (enforcement). Enforcement has been examined from the top-down by exploring the question of what makes people comply with rules [ 18 ],[ 19 ],[ 20 ],[ 21 ],[ 22 ],[ 23 ] or the effectiveness of government agencies in using enforcement to achieve compliance [ 24 ]. Peer group solidarity, moral motives and the legislator’s authority have been found to explain fishermen’s compliance [ 25 ],[ 26 ],[ 27 ],[ 28 ].…”

Risk tolerance and control perception in a game-theoretic bioeconomic model for small-scale fisheries

“…In fisheries, it is influenced by the sense of availability of the resource in the future, fisheries prices' changes and environmental instabilities [25,28,29]. On another side, compliance, in criminal literature, is basically associated with certainty and severity of a punishment [30]. The control perception, in our study, is the amount of certainty that the fisher has about being punished [31].…”

“…In this model, high risk tolerance will favour cooperators because, in this case, uncertainty will not drive fishers to fish more. Alternatively, behaviour penalty is directly proportional to control perception [30]. When perception of control is low (close to zero), for instance, the cheaters are favoured.…”

Peer Review #3 of "Compliance with vessel speed restrictions to protect North Atlantic right whales (v0.1)"

“…Enforcement activities can be labor-and resource-intensive and may be difficult if the regulated population is large or widely dispersed (Abbott, 2009;Ali & Abdullah, 2010). Where feasible, remote-monitoring can be a cost-effective means to improve compliance (Purdy, 2009).…”

“…A substantial body of socio-legal and economic literature has been devoted to the subject of regulatory compliance, but the factors that motivate individuals and businesses to comply are not always clear May, 2005). Compliance case studies have involved industrial pollution (Kagan et al, 2011), hazardous waste (Stafford, 2012), agricultural practices (Winter & May, 2001), forestry (Purdy, 2010;Peterson & Diss-Torrance, 2012), fisheries (Honneland, 1999;Ali & Abdullah, 2010), and endangered species conservation (Langpap, 2006;Innes & Frisvold, 2009), among others.…”