Blue Water Crime: Deterrence, Legitimacy, and Compliance in Fisheries

TLDR

Compliance behavior in fisheries is often modeled by deterrence theory, which emphasizes sanction certainty and severity, and by integrated economic and social‑psychological models that also consider legitimacy. The study aims to examine how legitimacy and deterrence influence fishermen’s compliance with a coastal fishing ban. The authors use probit and Tobit regressions to analyze compliance decisions of 318 Malaysian fishermen subject to a coastal zone ban. Empirical results confirm that both deterrence and legitimacy positively affect compliance, offering insights for fisheries compliance policy.

Abstract

This study adds to the limited body of empirical evidence on the effect that legitimacy and deterrence have on compliance behavior. The theoretical models of compliance behavior tested include the basic deterrence model, which focuses on the certainty and severity of sanctions as key determinants of compliance, and models which integrate economic theory with theories from social psychology to account for legitimacy, deterrence, and other motivations expected to influence individuals' decisions whether to comply. Probit and Tobit econometric estimators are used to examine the compliance behavior of 318 Peninsular Malaysian fishermen who face a regulation banning them from fishing in a zone along the coast. The results of the empirical analysis provide additional evidence on the relationship of deterrence and legitimacy to compliance. The findings are also used to draw implications for compliance policy for regulated fisheries.