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BENNETT ET AL. 5of10

tests (categorical variables) and analysis of variance (contin- of people living in the household (P < 0.01), as well as for
uous variables). “relative wealth,” “number of livelihoods,” “total number of
For further analysis, we limited our sample to only survey different fisheries and gears,” and “number of days the week
responses with complete demographics and composite scores that household eats fish or seafood” (P < 0.05).
(n = 102, ∼69% of the total questionnaires). To explore rela-
tionships between individual perceptions indicators and level
3.3 Perceptions of ecological effectiveness,
of support, we recoded the indicators and support (five lev-
social impacts, and good governance
els) as continuous variables and used Spearman's correlations.
Last, we used ordinal regression models to predict support for Overall, the perceptions of small-scale fishers of individual
the MPA as an ordinal outcome with each composite score as a indicators related to ecological effectiveness, social impacts,
predictor after controlling for the effects of other confounders. and good governance were relatively positive (Supporting
Models were adjusted for individual socioeconomic charac- Information Materials—Table S4). For ecological effective-
teristics (age, education, number of years in the village, num- ness, the vast majority felt that the impact was either neu-
ber of people in the household, relative wealth) and measures tral or positive for both fish abundance (neutral = 38.4%;
of the individuals’ dependence on fishing (number of fishing increase = 43.8%) and habitat quality (neutral = 31.7;
gears, proportion of income from fishing, days of the week improve = 58.6). Most of the social impact indicators—
fish is eaten in the household). All analyses were conducted income, livelihoods, food security, knowledge and education,
in SAS 9.4 and R-3.5.1 (R Core Team 2018; SAS 2018). community social well-being, and connections to nature—
were skewed toward the positive. The one exception was “fair-
ness of impacts,” which was slightly skewed toward the neg-
ative. Responses to questions related to indicators for percep-
3 RESULTS
tions of good governance varied the most with a significant
spread from negative to positive responses.
3.1 Survey sample
Individual perceptions, overall, were positively correlated
All 149 survey respondents were male small-scale fisher- with levels of support (Spearman's correlations rho > 0in
men (Supporting Information Materials—Table S3). Almost all cases, n = 102) (Figure 3). Applying Cohen's standard
half (49.8%) were 50 years or older. The majority of those (Cohen, 1988), correlation coefficients between 0.30 and
surveyed had completed only middle (43.2%) or elementary 0.49 represent a medium association. Indicators related to
(29.1%) school. Households often had two (30.6%), three governance—that is, transparency (0.47, P < 0.0001), conflict
(18.4%), or four (33.3%) people living in them. Most small- management and resolution (0.46, P < 0.0001), recognition
scale fishermen came from the local village (>80%) and the (0.46, P < 0.0001), and trust (0.40, P < 0.0001)—as well as
mean time living in the village was 43.3 years. Among those social impacts on knowledge and education (0.48, P < 0.0001)
surveyed, over half (68.6%) reported difficulty with mak- were most strongly correlated with levels of support. Income
ing enough to have a good quality of life in their village and livelihoods were the least correlated.
(i.e., relative wealth). Specifically, 24.5% felt that “it can be
challenging” and 44.1% said they are “just barely able” to
3.4 Composite metrics for ecological
make enough to live a good quality of life. They partici-
effectiveness, social impacts, and good
pated in an average of 2.8 different fisheries (median = 3;
governance
min—max = 1—6) and often had supplementary livelihoods
(46.7%). The composite scores (n = 102 respondents) for each of the
three categories were as follows (scale 0—10): (a) the percep-
tions of ecological effectiveness composite had a mean score
3.2 Level of support for marine protected
of 7.6 (median = 8.0), (b) the perceptions of social impacts
areas
composite had a mean score of 6.0 (median = 5.9), and (c)
Overall, the small-scale fishers were relatively supportive of the good governance composite had a mean score of 5.8
the MPAs (Figure 2) with 5.4% expressing strong opposition (median = 5.6) (Table 3). The composite scores for ecological
to the MPA (n = 8), 12.2% somewhat in opposition to the effectiveness, social impacts, and good governance differed
MPA (n = 18), 22.2% neutral toward the MPA (n = 33), 31% significantly by MPAs (Supporting Information Materials—
somewhat in support of the MPA (n = 46), and 29% voicing Figure S1).
strong support for the MPA (n = 43). There were statistically The distribution of scores for all three composites aligned
significant differences in levels of support by MPAs (Figure 2 with an increase in levels of support for the MPA (Figure 4).
and Supporting Information Materials—Table S5). Levels of Using ordinal regression (Table 4), there is a statistically sig-
support was also associated with country (P < 0.001), number nificant (P < 0.001) effect of increasing support for the MPA