Sponsor
Funding from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions and Markets (PIM) (Activity Number 176), UKAID under the International Forestry Knowledge Program’s (KNOWFOR) DFID Component Code 203034-103, and the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) supported this work.
Published In
World Development
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2-2018
Subjects
Marine parks and reserves, Fishery policy -- Environmental aspects, Natural resources -- Management, Communal natural resources -- Management
Abstract
Our paper describes the application of a realist approach to synthesizing evidence from 31 articles examining the environmental outcomes of marine protected areas governed under different types of property regimes. The development of resource tenure interventions that promote sustainable management practices has been challenged by the difficulties of determining how contextual factors affect environmental outcomes given the complexity of socio-ecological systems. Realist synthesis is a promising evidence review technique for identifying the mechanisms that influence policy intervention outcomes in complex systems. Through a combination of inductive and deductive analysis of the links between context, mechanisms, and outcomes, realist synthesis can help clarify when, how, where, and why property regime interventions are likely to result in positive environmental outcomes. Our study revealed the importance of disaggregating property regimes into sub-categories, rather than treating them as homogenous categories. More importantly, use of a realist synthesis approach allowed us to gain a deeper understanding of the ways in which three mechanisms—perceptions of legitimacy, perceptions of the likelihood of benefits, and perceptions of enforcement capacity interact under different socio-ecological contexts to trigger behavioral changes that affect environmental conditions. The approach revealed the multi-faceted and interactive nature of perceptions of legitimacy, in which legal legitimacy, social acceptability, and ecological credibility combined to create robust legitimacy. The existence of robust legitimacy in turn appeared to be an important contributor to the success of regulatory systems reliant on voluntary compliance. Our study contributes to the field of natural resources governance by demonstrating the utility of a systematic review method which has received little attention by property scholars but which has promise to clarify understanding of how complex systems work. Our study also highlights that achieving long-term sustainability requires paying greater attention to the mechanisms that support or undermine people’s willingness to voluntarily engage in conservation behaviors.
Locate the Document
DOI
10.1016/j.worlddev.2017.09.016
Persistent Identifier
http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/23688
Citation Details
Mclain, R., Lawry, S., & Ojanen, M. (2018). Fisheries’ Property Regimes and Environmental Outcomes: A Realist Synthesis Review. World Development, 102213-227.
Description
© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).