Navigating Towards Effective Fishery Management? Exploring the Dynamics of Compliance

Abstract

This paper deals with compliance in the European and Swedish fisheries management regimes. It takes on a theoretical exploration of the dynamics of institutional compliance, and extracts six hypotheses based on theoretical approaches focusing on the links between compliance and individual level trust, compliance and instituional trust, and compliance and norms. More specifically, the hypotheses suggest (1) that fishermen experiencing that governmental authorities perceive them as cheaters will be more prone to accept rule violations that others; (2) that the inclination of individual fishermen to accept regulations depend on their perceptions of the behaviour of other fishermen; (3) that fishermen feeling that they and their Swedish fellows are put under stricter regulations and supervision than fishermen in other countries are more tolerant against violations; (4) that those experiencing that fishermen’s knowledge is valued among other parties are more positive to the prevailing regulations than others; (5) that fishermen with experiences from stakeholder participation in the fisheries regime are more negative to rule violations; and (6) that there is a moral distinction implying that rule-violations are accepted as long as they are considered as an expression of need rather than greed. The empirical test of these hypotheses are beyond the scope of this paper. Having presented the six hypotheses, a descriptive section on European and Swedish fishery closes the paper.