Moving beyond binary metrics of compliance in small-scale fisheries

Compliance mediates how policies affect fisheries and the people who depend upon them for work, food, and well-being. Many of the world's small-scale fisheries lack clear, legal rules to prevent overfishing, or are subject to conflicting rules. Where clear rules do exist, noncompliance is widespread. Binary assessments of compliance, which frequently lead to calls for increased enforcement when compliance is low, tend to overlook the insights that can be gained from understanding how and why people comply or not. An emerging two-dimensional model that distinguishes between four ideal-types of compliance offers the opportunity to understand the motivations behind problems of illegality in natural resource management. We qualitatively operationalized this two-dimensional model of compliance using interview and survey data from four cases of small-scale fisheries regulation in Costa Rica, Mexico, Honduras, and Puerto Rico. The two-dimensional model explained social-ecological outcomes like fishery sustainability and marginalization of fishers, particularly where apparent compliance disguised corruption and disengagement. The two-dimensional model also accommodated incongruence between rules and the broader aims that they serve. Ultimately, the two-dimensional diagnostic was practical and useful for identifying diverse policy levers to address illegal fishing in addition to enforcement. This work advances our understanding of links among compliance, self-governance, justice, and sustainability of the commons.