The effects of Fishpath, a multi-stakeholder decision-support tool, on stakeholder buy-in to management in data-limited fisheries

Fisheries are increasingly managed with involvement of fishers and other stakeholders; this approach is believed to create ownership and maximize stakeholder buy-in. Stakeholder involvement is critical where managers lack adequate knowledge, resources to gather additional information, or resources to implement management. Such ‘data-limited’ fisheries are of global import but face challenges to meeting management goals. Sustainable management of data-limited fisheries may be improved by decision support. This paper reports results of a field experiment testing the FishPath interactive decision-support software tool for data-limited fisheries (FishPath) and its influence on stakeholder buy-in to management. In Stage 1, participants were provided a hypothetical fishery that mimicked real-world data limitations, and a tailored shortlist of management options; participants did not interact with FishPath. In Stage 2, participants collectively input the fishery into FishPath; the tool output the same management options seen in Stage 1. In Stage 3, to assess the effect of expert support, participants were randomly assigned to control and treatment groups. The control group explored output without additional support, while the treatment group explored output with support from a FishPath expert. After each stage, participants were asked to rate: 1) their support for formal management of the fishery; 2) how easy or hard they expected management of the fishery to be; and 3) how effective they expected management of the fishery to be. FishPath use increased stakeholder participants’ perceptions of the ease and effectiveness of management at each stage of the experiment, although support for management was unchanged.