Institutional and Ecological Interplay for Successful Self-Governance of Community-Based Fisheries
Abstract
The goal of this paper is to improve our understanding of the role of institutional
arrangements and ecological factors that facilitate the emergence and sustainability
of successful collective action in small-scale fishing social–ecological systems.
Using a modified logistic growth function, we simulate how ecological factors (i.e.
carrying capacity) affect small-scale fishing communities with varying degrees of
institutional development (i.e. timeliness to adopt new institutions and the degree
to which harvesting effort is reduced), in their ability to avoid overexploitation.
Our results show that strong and timely institutions are necessary but not sufficient
to maintain sustainable harvests over time. The sooner communities adopt institutions,
and the stronger the institutions they adopt, the more likely they are to sustain
the resource stock. Exactly how timely the institutions must be adopted, and by what
amount harvesting effort must be diminished, depends on the ecological carrying capacity
of the species at the particular location. Small differences in the carrying capacity
between fishing sites, even under scenarios of similar institutional development,
greatly affects the likelihood of effective collective action.
Type
Journal articleSubject
Common-pool resourcesCollective action
Social–ecological systems
Small-scale fisheries
Gulf of California
Mexico
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Xavier Basurto
Truman and Nellie Semans/Alex Brown & Sons Associate Professor
I am interested in the fundamental question of how groups (human and non-human) can
find ways to self-organize, cooperate, and engage in successful collective action
for the benefit of the common good. To do this I strive to understand how the institutions
(formal and informal rules and norms) that govern social behavior, interplay with
biophysical variables to shape social-ecological systems. What kind of institutions
are better able to govern complex-adaptive systems? and how can societies (la

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