In Fiji, the Fisheries Act (Cap. 158) grants native Fijians customary fishing rights in their respective traditional fishing ground (qoliqoli) (Minter, 2008). Customary chiefs and clan heads can control access to fishing areas and make decisions regarding local marine tenure. Generally, chiefs and communities have decisive authority over local resource management (Veitayaki, 1998). Fishing areas are clearly demarcated and thus spatially define access rights (Weeks and Jupiter, 2013). Although the Fisheries Act remains the primary piece of legislation for inshore fisheries, customary right holders have unique and exclusive access rights to their traditional fishing ground. This creates a legal pluralist situation that can challenge local enforcement capacities in the face of current CBMRM practice.

In Fiji a village on the island of Ovalau, Lomaiviti Province, served as local case study site (FJ, Figure 1). With its ~350 inhabitants, FJ shares a traditional fishing ground with four other villages, although these have separate managed areas. In this village, marine resources and fishing have traditionally been an important part of peoples' lives. Yet, other livelihoods (mainly small-scale agriculture) are available and additional income-generating activities (mainly through employment in the nearby fish factory, especially for women) are practiced. The village set up a managed area in the form of a periodically-harvested closure in front of the village about 10 years ago, with assistance of a regional network and other partners. The site has generally remained closed to any harvesting activities since its establishment. However, a small section of the managed area has been opened several times for a couple of days in cases of chiefly (or other important villagers') deaths.

In Solomon Islands the constitution and fisheries legislation also recognize customary rights. Diverse socio-cultural, historic and economic processes have created differential and contested territorial customary rights systems. As a result, customary marine tenure systems vary regionally and are generally more stratified, decentralized and politically eclectic than in Fiji (Aswani, 1997, 1999).

In Solomon Islands, our research was conducted in a village in Roviana Lagoon in the Western Province (SI, Figure 2). In this area, customary chiefs and elders control access to and use of marine resources. Villages in Roviana Lagoon are remote and only accessible by boat. Approximately 1,000 people live in SI. Households are highly dependent on marine resources. Fishing is the single or second most important livelihood, together with small-scale agriculture. Local marine resource management consists of a marine closure in front of the village that is permanently closed for all fishing and other marine harvesting activities. This site forms part of a marine conservation and development program initiated in the late 1990s that included 32 management sites across the Western Solomon Islands. The program was established with advice of foreign academic experts and was financially supported through external (international) donors (see Aswani et al., 2007). A community-based organization (CBO), founded in the course of the program, assisted with the management and implementation of the marine closure in collaboration with local leadership (customary and church leaders) and a local resource management committee that was created for this purpose.

At the village level, interviewees were selected purposively to cover a broad range of potentially relevant respondent characteristics and individual perceptions. The following contextual variables were developed for this sampling process: (1) marine resource users; (2) persons involved in local decision-making; (3) age; (4) gender; (5) church denomination (mainly for the Solomon Islands case study, where this emerged as a key aspect for people's role within and perceptions of the community); (6) involvement in other livelihoods apart from fishing (mainly for the Fijian case study, where this seemed to lower direct resource dependency and hence influence views on the marine closure and compliance issues). Interviews were used to get an overview of relevant themes and divergent views regarding local (non-) compliance. Selecting interviewees at the village level was done in an iterative process. Thus, initial analysis and results gained through the interviews were used to elaborate the above-mentioned contextual variables and to select further interviewees as well as key informants. Interviews at the village level were conducted until no new additional information or themes were emerging (i.e., until saturation was reached).

Interviewees may not represent the view of everyone in the village due to the fact that we used non-random sampling. In order to minimize potential biases (e.g., due to personal networks and social relations) during the selection of research participants, we worked with interpreters who were not from the research sites.

Focus groups built upon key themes that emerged from the interviews, allowing for data triangulation. Focus groups were comprised of seven to eight participants each. They were conducted separately for women, men, and in Fiji also for the youth, because there a stronger generational differentiation became apparent. The majority of the focus group discussants were involved in fishing. Some (especially older men) were or had also been involved in local decision-making, and some had a different income source (especially women in the Fijian case study through employment in the fish factory). Focus group participants were chosen purposefully in collaboration with local field assistants while seeking a good balance of potentially relevant characteristics of the participants (e.g., church denomination in the Solomon Islands case study).

At the provincial and national levels, representatives from relevant ministries or departments (e.g., fisheries and environment), civil society (e.g., NGOs and international organizations) and academia were interviewed. Purposive and snowball sampling was used to identify respondents at these levels. Using a snowball sampling approach runs the risk that only certain opinions are heard due to path dependencies. In order to avoid this fallacy we sought specifically to interview actors with potentially opposing views.

For data collection at the village level we used indirect questioning, i.e., asking respondents about the compliance behavior of others and not (necessarily) their own. This was done in order to diminish potential response biases (people giving inaccurate information), as well as nonresponse biases (people refusing to give information) (Arias et al., 2015). Such biases were expected because questions around (non-) compliance touch upon sensitive issues, especially in a small village setting. The utility of such an assessment of what can be referred to as “perceived compliance” as a proxy for actual compliance has been demonstrated in other studies (Arias and Sutton, 2013). Yet, it should be taken into account that theories such as the social norms approach (Berkowitz, 2005) argue that people tend to overestimate the non-compliant and negative attitude of their peers beyond their actual behaviors. Nevertheless, it is also conceivable that a direct approach would not have revealed much non-compliance either, or that interviewees would have belittled their own infringements.

Guidelines were used for the interviews and focus groups at the village level (see Supplementary Material). Through the interviews we first wanted to gain an understanding of the local marine resource management arrangements, changes regarding these arrangements, and peoples' perceptions of them. Therefore, interview questions firstly enquired about: existing and previous local marine resource management, perceptions of their purpose and benefits, issues regarding local decision-making, and peoples' participation in it. Secondly, questions were asked about: perceptions of local compliance with rules, enforcement, and local management of disputes. Similar questions and themes to the ones addressed in the interviews guided the focus groups, though in a more interactive and collective way (Mancini Billson, 2006). For example, participants were asked to discuss reasons for non-compliance and collectively identify and rank the most important drivers of non-compliant behavior, while being asked to explain for whom (which group) these drivers were important and why. Furthermore, participant observations (e.g., attending informal gatherings, a village market, and a church service; going to sea with fishers; accompanying locals on village walks) were used to further contextualize and triangulate information obtained otherwise.

At the provincial and national levels interviews enquired about: respondents' perceptions of the potentials and challenges of local marine resource management in their country, their views on local compliance, enforcement, and the role of the national legislation (and, if applicable, of the respondents' agency) with regards to this.

Data from all interviews and focus groups were transcribed and analyzed inductively through open, axial and selective coding (Corbin and Strauss, 2008). Qualitative data analysis software (MAXQDA) was used to identify and relate emerging themes and patterns from the transcripts and to link these to secondary data sources (e.g., legislations) as well as to the theoretical and empirical literature. Further information on the codes used for the analysis can be found in the Supplementary Material.

In FJ our study reveals two sets of aspects that partly constrained perceived legitimacy of the managed area, particularly for young fishermen. Firstly, data from interviews and focus groups reveal that a lack of participation and consultation regarding the local management, particularly about the size and location of the managed area, lowered perceptions of its legitimacy. Especially male youth, but partly also older women, voiced that they did not feel involved or consulted during the establishing process of the managed area—and thus perceived the managed area as illegitimately constraining their customary fishing rights. In Fiji, the Fisheries Act grants customary rights to fish inside a certain qoliqoli (traditional fishing ground) to every native Fijian whose mataqali (clan or other subdivision) has been registered by the Native Fisheries Commission. This basically applied to all inhabitants of FJ. Although older male informants expressed, and other sources confirmed, that a consultation process did take place, it might not have involved all actors within the village that currently impacted upon and were impacted by the managed area. The current youth were still too young to witness the establishment process of the managed area 10 years ago, and were hence not part of that consultation. Women did not participate actively during workshops for other reasons (e.g., due to traditional gender roles that constrain women from actively participating in such meetings, or time constraints related to family responsibilities, or work at the fish factory).

Secondly, the current managed area varied from customary tenure arrangements practiced in earlier times with regards to its permanent nature as well as to its (perceived) main purpose. The first aspect relates to a change in the periods of closures. Data from our study reveal that the managed area was set up in a way that locals perceived as a permanent closure. Although customary leadership decided a few times to open one section of the managed area in the past in case of a chief's or another important villager's death, the “general status” of this part of the fishing ground was “closed.” In previous times, the general status was “open,” with temporal closures of a smaller section of the fishing ground to commemorate when a chief died. Therefore, villagers generally perceived the current managed area as permanent closure. This means the managed area was restricting fishing activities considerably more than previous practices used to. The second aspect relates to the perceived main purpose of the management interventions. Previously, customary approaches had served to impose periodic closures for special cultural and social events (commemoration of a chief's death). Indicated by consensus reached in a focus group discussion, these customary closures were thus perceived as mainly serving the (socio-cultural) purpose of having food for that special occasion and not for resource management. Focus group discussions disclosed that in current practice, locals perceived the aim of the managed area as being more focused on (longer-term) conservation objectives (notwithstanding that these conservation objectives are ostensibly linked to ensuring food security and thus allow for a continuation of the culture of fishing).

Both factors, the lack of participation and consultation as well as perceptions of the altered nature and purpose of the management arrangement, were especially stressed by young fishermen. Among this constituency, they lowered feelings of ownership for the local management initiative and increased the perception that the restriction of their customary fishing rights by the managed area was illegitimate. This in turn then drove non-compliant behavior by this group.

There was consensus among respondents that in FJ especially young men resorted to poaching as (small-scale) income generating activity. They mainly did so when they did not have an alternative source of income, such as work in the near-by fish factory. Because the catch per unit effort (CPUE) was (perceived) higher inside the managed area, fishing there promised a fast catch and easy cash when selling the fish, which happened mainly on local markets.

In FJ the managed area was located right in front of the village, stretching from the shore to the outer reef slope. This area had been chosen because indigenous ecological knowledge indicated that it was especially ecologically relevant. Yet, its location clearly limited the accessibility of the (permitted) fishing grounds. It implied that local fishers either had to walk long distances during low tide or that they needed a boat—which were rare. There was only one bamboo raft and two fiberglass boats available in the village; the latter came with costs for the fuel. These limitations to access the fishing grounds outside the managed area, implying more time and money investments, were an impediment to compliance with the managed area. Respondents throughout the interviews agreed that this could further promote fishing inside the managed area. This was more likely when coupled with the above-mentioned economic incentives, and applied especially to young fishermen who lacked an alternative livelihood or income.

Although most managed areas are not legally gazetted in Fiji, they do receive partial legal back-up under the Fisheries Act under two scenarios. Communities can “arrest” a poacher who is caught fishing inside the managed area and take this person to the police or closest fisheries office if: (1) it is a licensed fisher who is not respecting the managed area (more commonly applies to commercial fishers from outside the village who do not have customary fishing rights in this area), because license conditions prescribe that local (customary) management rules ought to be respected, or (2) someone is selling fish (no matter where the fish was caught) without having a license. Nonetheless, these scenarios have limited applicability to local non-compliance where people draw on customary fishing rights to engage in subsistence fishing. Under the current Fisheries Act small-scale sale of catch that exceeds subsistence needs has so far been tolerated for customary fishing right holders. This is why the second scenario does usually not apply to local poachers. Yet, this issue has been recognized as a gray area and will probably be addressed in the course of reviewing the fisheries legislation—a process that was initiated in 2006 and is still ongoing.

In FJ it is common to announce local poachers in village meetings or during church services. Commonly the chief or village headman speaks to that person to issue an oral warning, too. Nevertheless, respondents agreed that the deterrent threat of these penalties was not very high, especially because there were no graduated sanctions (nothing more serious happens if that person poaches again). Further enforcement efforts of local marine resource management initiatives remained limited. In order to enforce managed areas under national law—in Fiji under one of the two scenarios described above—the police or another state authority would need to get involved. In Fiji local voluntary fish wardens are appointed to monitor local marine tenure rules (managed areas). At the same time these wardens are tasked with monitoring local compliance with national regulations, such as species restrictions and mesh size of nets, under the Fisheries Act. Fish wardens can be appointed by the Minister of Fisheries after receiving training by the Department of Fisheries. They are not paid nor do they receive any substantial financial support or equipment. Not all villages in Fiji have fish wardens—it rather depends on the initiative of the village itself and/or supporting partner organizations. Fish wardens or local leadership who want to report infringers to the police need to keep and demonstrate evidence of the infringement (e.g., confiscated catch, gear, boat). Yet, besides the training that fish wardens receive by the Department of Fisheries, they are not trained as prosecutors, and thus not familiar with the details of keeping evidence. Additionally, fish wardens often face police officers who are not aware of the fisheries legislation or who are reluctant to investigate and prosecute fisheries crimes.

Furthermore, findings from FJ show that, in former times, the temporal closures on fishing areas declared by customary leaders were more strongly related to a socio-cultural purpose and tradition (chiefly deaths). As a result, these taboos were more respected than current managed areas because “it [was] part of tradition and [breaching it] would go directly against the chief,” as expressed by one respondent in FJ. The current managed area had been supported by partner organizations that have more clearly brought in conservation objectives as part of a sustainability discourse. Consequently, locals perceived the managed area in FJ less as a strict taboo in the traditional sense. Thus, offenses were perceived to oppose rules that had been influenced by external actors, instead of directly opposing a chiefly decision.

Our study reveals various socio-cultural constraints for local monitoring and enforcement in FJ. Firstly, fish wardens were constrained in reporting local infringers due to the strong network of clan and family relationships they were embedded in. This means fish wardens usually knew local infringers well and might therefore have been reluctant to report non-compliant behaviors, as this might have negatively impacted their own social relations. The same limitation applies to chiefs and clan heads, who would decide about consequences to take against local poachers if these were reported by the fish wardens or other community members.

Secondly, the selection process for appointing fish wardens did not seem to be transparent and not everyone within the village was aware of the identity and the role of the wardens. This further impeded their work because some people might not have recognized their authority at all, or (again), perceived it as less legitimate.

In FJ villagers agreed that the area of the marine closure was too big to monitor from the shore, and monitoring would thus require patrols by boat. Yet, boats and/or money for fuel for the boats were lacking. Detection of infringers was further made difficult because poaching occurred at night most of the times. Additionally, respondents throughout interviews agreed that two fish wardens for the managed area were not sufficient, especially given that both of them were active fishermen, too. This means that many times they were involved in harvesting activities themselves while not being able to solely concentrate on monitoring the managed area.

In SI data from our study disclose that two developments generally lowered the perceived legitimacy of local leadership, which included chiefs and the council of elders who made decisions about marine tenure, persons who implemented these (e.g., rangers), and the church. One of these developments was associated with the (perceived) misuse of money; firstly in relation to logging activities that were ongoing on the main island opposite the village, but also with regards to the management of the managed area. Since inhabitants of the community owned the land where the logging company was operating, they had been receiving a substantial amount of “royalty payments” on a regular basis. This money was given to some of the leaders (“trustees”) to share it among the community. A large proportion of interviewed villagers perceived that this did not happen in a transparent and equal way. This caused perceptions of unequal benefits and procedural unfairness in SI, and was given as a reason for non-compliant behavior as a payback strategy against the leaders.

Similarly, many locals perceived that the money that was given by international donors to support the local CBO and resource management committee (including local rangers) was not being used transparently and in a way that was beneficial to everyone. Particularly some women expressed their growing mistrust toward the (predominantly male) leadership, highlighting that they no longer followed rules (i.e., the managed area) made by this leadership. As one woman pointed out when asked about conflicts with regards to the managed area: “Yes, there were also conflicts, especially with the money. These people [referring to the local leadership] are not reliable. […] They are not transparent. [I] was one of these poachers […]. [But] I was not poaching, [I] was showing that [I] was not happy about the decisions [the leadership was taking], so when they [rangers] came up, [I] would tell them ‘you tell me where the money went, and then I stop fishing in this area.”’ In SI women actively participated in fishing and harvesting of other marine resources (mainly shells), thus providing an important food source for their families. Yet, they hardly took part in local decision-making processes, including with regards to the management of marine resources, and were underrepresented in leadership committees such as the council of elders. Over the last century chiefs were mostly male, too.

The second development that led to diminished, and divergent, perceptions of the legitimacy of the council of elders and leadership in SI was related to the division of the predominant local church. In SI religious leaders played an important role within customary governance processes for a long time and were involved in ongoing conservation and management initiatives. The leader of the predominant local church gave his blessing for the managed area years back (in 2005), which was of great importance and meaning for locals in order to respect it as conservation area. Later, when this spiritual leader fell sick, discussions about his succession turned into a conflict between the two competing aspirants and their respective supporters. The church members were divided into two groups. The division affected the council of elders and other leadership meetings, too, because most of their members belonged to one or the other group. Since the death of the (former) spiritual leader in 2014, animosities between both groups increased further. The schism not only generated divergent views as to which spiritual leader to follow from now on, but also doubts about the acceptability of leadership, such as the council of elders, and their decisions. Data from interviews and focus groups reveal that it also generally deteriorated feelings of shared group membership and identity as well as trust within the community. This further diminished cooperative and prosocial behavior—including with regards to the managed area, where this led to more non-compliance.

A further aspect that is enhancing heterogeneity of the local population and adding to socio-cultural diversity is the fact that in SI, many people from other tribes and provinces were marrying into or out of the village. This was referred to as “intermarriage” and was a common theme coming up throughout interviews with diverse respondents. Although intermarriage does not necessarily lead to disunity, it was mostly raised as potential problem that had detrimental effects including on compliance with the managed area. An older fisherman in SI expressed: “[…] Those people who are married here, because they have different traditions and “kastoms” in their respective homes, they just don't tend to follow [the rules set by the local leaders, such as the managed area].”

Our study shows that people's decisions to comply were influenced by the perceived compliance behavior of others in the community and perceived unequal distribution of benefits (from rule-breaking), as this statement by a male respondent in SI underlines: “I support not to fish in conservation areas. But if I keep on talk talk talk to members of the community not to go out [to fish inside the managed area], and people do not listen to me, do you think I will keep on talking talking talking? I will also want to have fish. In turn I will go and fish [inside the managed area], too.”

Finally, and similarly to findings from FJ, results from a focus group in SI reveal that locals perceived the current marine closure as an alteration of former customary practices and temporal closures. This was firstly due to its permanency, and secondly, due to a perceived shift from a socio-cultural purpose toward a stronger focus on conservation objectives.

In SI there was consensus throughout the focus group discussions that poaching within the managed area for an income intensified when new market access opportunities arose—through middlemen and ships of the logging company operating nearby. The latter offered access to the market of the island's capital because villagers could put their coolers with fish for free on the logging ships when they made their way to the capital harbor, and sell it there. In SI alternative sources of cash income apart from fishing for sale were limited to marketing of local products, including copra, and operating small stores. Hence, for people wishing to earn some money (e.g., to pay school fees for their children or for church contributions) instead of living merely on a subsistence basis, poaching and selling the fish became more attractive. Again, there was consensus among respondents that the CPUE inside the managed area was higher (which is also related to the biophysical and ecological characteristics of that area), which further incentivized fishing inside the area for an “easy catch.”

In SI the managed area was located directly in front of the village, too. The location of the marine closure had been decided based upon: indigenous ecological knowledge, scientific ecological surveys, and ease of monitoring (due to its proximity to the village), and the decision happened in consultation with the local leadership. Interview respondents similarly agreed that some (in this case especially older) people poached because they were “too tired to go far out to fish.” Further, female respondents raised the complaint that the closure particularly constrained their fishing activities because it was set up in an area where mainly women used to fish. As one (female) respondent put it: “That is the number one place where [women] used to fish!” She further explained, and other respondents confirmed, that this was due to the area's closeness to the village. Women, due to their multiple responsibilities in the household and involvement with child care, could not afford to spend long hours fishing or go to more distant fishing grounds.

In SI an interview respondent expressed that, apart from national laws that prohibited most customary penalties, the influence of missionaries and Christian imperatives weakened the effect of customary sanctions. This is related to the concept of “forgiveness” that was introduced by Christian missionaries in the early twentieth century. An old fisherman in SI explained: “Before missionaries came and before the church was here, our traditional governance [was] much more feared […]. Because we only had one rule with[in] our traditions: you do something wrong which is against our traditions, we will kill you. [In the course of Christianization these penalty systems were weakened]: so when you break rule in our traditional way, the church comes in. That is forgiveness. When the church comes in, there is no longer value for our traditions.” On the other hand, the involvement of the religious leaders in the marine conservation program in SI also served as a vehicle for reviving traditional systems and strengthened traditional leadership. Before the schisms of the local predominant church the fear of the spirit of the spiritual authority was very strong. But as the strength of this leadership weakened, so did the fear of retribution.

In general, the perceived risk of sanctions for non-compliance with the managed area was very low in SI, and therewith the deterrence threat for rule-breaking. Previously, non-compliance with the managed area used to be addressed in village meetings and/or church gatherings to publicly announce and warn offenders. This became less common since the schism and the resulting division of the community, because generally less village and leadership meetings took place since then. Also, the effect of verbal warnings and public announcement recently decreased due to the community division and resulting divergent views on the legitimacy of leadership which made these announcements.

In SI the church schism and related division of the community also affected monitoring activities of the local rangers who used to detect and “arrest” (stop/talk to) local infringers who fished inside the managed area. Back then, incidents were reported to the local resource management committee and/or to the council of elders who would then announce it in respective meetings. When data for this study were collected, these rangers were no longer active and no one else took on the responsibility of monitoring. This was partly due to the mentioned socio-religious division of the community, as well as to other disputes around (the perceived misuse of) money and logging, which significantly weakened the role of the supporting CBO and the rangers.

In SI villagers and rangers had access to wooden canoes that can be used for monitoring the managed area. However, lack of funding for the CBO that was previously supporting the management and equipping rangers, e.g., with torches for their night shifts, is another reason, besides the ones mentioned above, that was recently constraining monitoring activities. Rangers had previously complained about a lack of regular salaries. A self-sufficient and sustainable structure to finance monitoring activities was envisaged by the supporting external partners in SI but did not succeed. Still, other (mainly female) interview respondents conveyed their impression that rangers were receiving payments for their work in the past, which in their eyes increased (financial) inequalities in the village.