Navarro, Matthew, Mahony, Tracey, Jarvis, Diane, Stoeckl, Natalie, Gelves-Gomez, Francisco, and Adams, Vanessa M. (2025) Hooking recreational fishers on sustainable fishing: Consistent psycho-social determinants raise potential for broad scale interventions. Ambio. (In Press)

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Abstract

The establishment of marine protected areas with high levels of compliance is a cornerstone of global marine conservation. Previous studies highlight the importance of psycho-social mechanisms (e.g. attitudes, social norms) for driving self-compliance amongst recreational fishers. However, our ability to put these fishery-specific insights into broad-practice requires understanding how transferable they are across locations. In this study, we find that psycho-social determinants of sustainable fishing practices are consistent across three contrasting marine protected areas spanning the Australian continent (separated by up to 3500 km). Intentions to promote sustainable fishing practices were stronger for fishers who were aware of zoning, were positive towards regulations, and whose peers supported sustainable fishing practices. Most of the variability in these factors was linked to intangible fisher characteristics, especially fisher motivations. Consistency across our national sample raises the potential for a national approach to tackling self-compliance of recreational fishers with marine protected area regulations.

Item ID:	86993
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	0044-7447
Keywords:	Angling; Compliance; Marine protected area; Recreational fishing; Theory of planned behaviour
Related URLs:	Publisher
Copyright Information:	This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Funders:	Australian National Environmental Science Program (NESP) Marine and Coastal Hub, Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority
Projects and Grants:	NESP M&C Project 2.5
Date Deposited:	26 Aug 2025 01:22
FoR Codes:	38 ECONOMICS > 3801 Applied economics > 380102 Behavioural economics @ 50% 38 ECONOMICS > 3801 Applied economics > 380105 Environment and resource economics @ 50%
SEO Codes:	15 ECONOMIC FRAMEWORK > 1505 Microeconomics > 150509 Preference, behaviour and welfare @ 70% 18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1805 Marine systems and management > 180599 Marine systems and management not elsewhere classified @ 30%
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