Perceived fairness of conservation decision-making more strongly influenced by absence than presence of procedural equity criteria
Hampton-Smith, Melissa, Gurney, Georgina G., Curnock, Matthew, Ruano-Chamorro, Cristina, and Cinner, Joshua (2025) Perceived fairness of conservation decision-making more strongly influenced by absence than presence of procedural equity criteria. npj Ocean Sustainability, 5. 4.
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Abstract
People’s perceptions about how fair conservation decision-making is can play a critical role in whether they support and comply with conservation efforts. Termed procedural equity, fair decision-making is emphasized in policy and practice due to its ethical and instrumental importance. However, limited understanding of what contributes to perceptions of fair decision-making may hamper efforts to foster procedural equity.We analyze quantitative survey data to examine how six criteria of procedural equity (accountability, correctability, voice, decision control, transparency, and trust) are related to perceptions of fairness in decision-making for 1799 residents of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. We find that: 1) five out of six procedural equity criteria are related to perceived fairness of decision-making; and 2) the absence of procedural equity criteria has a generally stronger relationship to perceived (un)fairness in decision-making than the presence of procedural equity criteria. Rather than making assumptions about what constitutes fairness, we empirically demonstrate the relative importance of each criterion in promoting perceptions of fairness in conservation decision-making. Comparing the uneven relationship between absent and present criteria to perceived decision-making fairness highlights the strong negative impacts that ignoring procedural equity concerns can have for conservation projects.
| Item ID: | 90562 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 2731-426X |
| Copyright Information: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, 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 you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. 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 CreativeCommons 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/bync-nd/4.0/. © The Author(s) 2025 |
| Funders: | Australian Research Council (ARC) |
| Projects and Grants: | ARC DE210101918 |
| Date Deposited: | 08 Apr 2026 02:25 |
| FoR Codes: | 41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4104 Environmental management > 410401 Conservation and biodiversity @ 50% 41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4104 Environmental management > 410404 Environmental management @ 50% |
| SEO Codes: | 18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1805 Marine systems and management > 180507 Rehabilitation or conservation of marine environments @ 100% |
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