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ARTICLE IN PRESS
A.H. Himes / Ocean & Coastal Management 50 (2007) 329–351 343
Beyond improving management organization, stakeholder groups tended to vary
significantly. Local residents and fishers agreed that increasing enforcement and
compliance is the second most important performance indicator. Third, local residents
ranked an increase in the quantity and accuracy of information about the MPA while
fishers put active protection and repopulation of the marine environment in third place and
residents placed active protection in fourth place.
They then differ substantially in indicator preferences. Fishers ranked increasing
available information about the MPA relatively low. Instead they place more importance
on changing the regulations and zone boundaries and involving fishers (and the
community) in management. Residents, on the other hand, identify helping the community
cope with the MPA both economically and mentally in the top five indicators.
Other than the agreement on improving management organization, MPA managers
differed significantly from other groups in their preferences. First of all, increasing the
availability and accuracy of information about the MPA was tied in first with improving
management organization. Following, modifying the regulations and boundaries and
increasing quality-based tourism were tied in third place. While researchers gave little
consideration, managers ranked increasing enforcement and compliance as the fifth most
important performance indicator. For managers, this tied with increasing community
involvement, which was also significantly important for fishers.
As stated previously, researchers ranked the protection and repopulation of the marine
environment as the most important performance indicator. This was followed by
‘maintaining or decreasing the local tourism industry’ and ‘better organization of MPA
management’. In addition, researchers indicated a strong preference for increasing the
quantity and accuracy of information about the MPA. Not surprisingly, while all other
groups ranked increasing monitoring and research close to the bottom of the importance
scale, researchers ranked it in fifth place.

5.3. Achieving good performance through management interventions

To follow up on stakeholder cited performance indicators, respondents were asked,
‘‘What management initiatives would need to be done to achieve your vision of success?’’
The goal of this question was to give respondents the opportunity to suggest management
initiatives that could provide the mechanism for achieving the successful MPA they
described in the previous question. This question probed for a more detailed explanation
of stakeholder preferences for performance indicators in the EIMR. It also provides a
more natural indication of criteria respondents use to judge how successful the EIMR is;
for a given respondent, a minimum of success will be reached with the implementation of
the management interventions that they suggest. While many respondents proposed
relatively general or vague management initiatives, many used very specific language in
their suggestions. The responses were categorized and coded in the same way as seen in
Table 3. The distribution by stakeholder group of citations of 17 all-inclusive categories is
summarized in Table 5.
In comparing the responses given in these two questions about performance and
‘success’ indicators and management interventions, it is clear that respondent descriptions
of what makes a successful MPA differ slightly from their criteria for management
interventions that would help to maximize the achievement of those indicators. While
stakeholders’ vision of success tended to focus heavily on planning, outputs and outcomes