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Received: 6 December 2018 Revised: 21 February 2019 Accepted: 21 February 2019
DOI: 10.1111/conl.12640

LETTER

Local support for conservation is associated with perceptions of

good governance, social impacts, and ecological effectiveness

Nathan J. Bennett 1,2,3 Antonio Di Franco 3 Antonio Calò 3 Elizabeth Nethery 4
Federico Niccolini 5 Marco Milazzo 6,7 Paolo Guidetti 3,7

1 Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries and
Abstract
Institute for Resources, Environment and
Sustainability, University of British Local support is important for the longevity of conservation initiatives. The literature
Columbia, Vancouver, Canada suggests that perceptions of ecological effectiveness, social impacts, and good gov-
2 Center for Ocean Solutions, Stanford ernance will influence levels of local support for conservation. This paper examines
University, Monterrey, California
these relationships using data from a survey of small-scale fishermen in 11 marine pro-
3 CNRS, ECOSEAS Lab., Université Côte
tected areas from six countries in the Mediterranean Sea. The survey queried small-
d'Azur, Nice, France
4 School of Population and Public Health, scale fishermen regarding perceptions and support for conservation. We constructed
University of British Columbia, Vancouver, composite scores for three categories of perceptions—ecological effectiveness, social
Canada
impacts, and good governance—and tested the relationship with levels of support
5 Department of Economics and Management,
using ordinal regression models. While all three factors were positively correlated
University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
6 Department of Earth and Marine Sciences, with support for conservation, perceptions of good governance and social impacts
University of Palermo, Palermo, Italy were stronger predictors of increasing support. These findings suggest that employ-
7
CoNISMa (National Interuniversity ing good governance processes and managing social impacts may be more important
Consortium of Marine Sciences), Rome, Italy
than ecological effectiveness for maintaining local support for conservation.
Correspondence
Nathan J.Bennett,Institute for the Oceans KEYWORDS
and Fisheriesand Institute for Resources, conservation, good governance, management effectiveness, marine protected areas, perceptions, small-
Environment and Sustainability,University of scale fisheries, social impacts
British Columbia,AERL Building,429-2202
Main Mall,Vancouver,BC V6T 1Z4,Canada.
Email: nathan.bennett@ubc.ca

Funding information
European Regional Development Fund; Euro-
pean Territorial Cooperation Programme MED

1 INTRODUCTION effectiveness and long-term persistence of conservation pro-
grams and initiatives (Gelcich & Donlan 2015; Rohe, Aswani,
Conservation initiatives—such as marine and terrestrial Schlüter, & Ferse, 2017; Sorice & Donlan 2015; Voyer, Glad-
protected areas—are often situated near resource-based stone, & Goodall, 2015). The longevity of conservation initia-
communities whose livelihoods and well-being depend on tives may be particularly important for successfully achieving
the local environment. The ongoing support from these local the aims of conservation, as ecological benefits are related to
communities and constituents can be crucial for the short-term the time since establishment (Claudet et al., 2008; Edgar et al.,

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original
work is properly cited.
© 2019 The Authors. Conservation Letters published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Conservation Letters. 2019;e12640. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/conl 1of10
https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12640