Finally, this is the result of a mammoth effort by co-lead Alina Wieczorek and a tenacious international author team: @dorothydankel.bsky.social, K. Hamon, @marloeskraan.bsky.social, M. Mackay, D. Pedreschi, I. van Putten, A. Richter, N. Steiner, @nathaliesteins.bsky.social, and X. Verschuur

It's a juicy paper and not easily summarised in a thread like this, so go check it out in full if you are interested in #policy, #behaviour, and topics like #conservation, #bycatch #livelihoods #culture and #overfishing

doi.org/10.1111/faf....

We see that the field grapples with many interesting concepts, but has trouble operationalising them: most studies present incidental findings and lack links between theory and outcomes. We present a conceptual framework that can hopefully help future researchers improve on this!

We also reviewed the literature's engagement with #ethics and found that only 14% of the reviewed papers mentioned any sort of informed consent and/or ethics committee processes. We find this alarming, given that the intention of these studies is to steer human behaviour!

There is evidence for non-economic mechanisms such as social norms, community (self-)education programs, and bandwagon effects (where one does something because everyone else is doing it) being able to change environmental outcomes, suggesting potential levers for change beyond fines and incentives

There's something for everyone in the results: geographical focus, methods overviews, even which fishers are studied more often. We also look at the outcomes of interventions: environmental, economic, social, and, importantly, the unintended consequences of attempts to steer fisher behaviour

5 years ago we pre-registered our methods (published here: doi.org/10.1371/jour...

We wanted to create a robust policy-relevant overview of the behavioural economics (BE) literature; a one-stop-shop for understanding the state of the art, the concepts, and the methods of this 'trendy' field.

Finally, I'm curious to hear how this thinking might apply to other cases: offshore wind farms and GMO food come to mind in the environmental domain, but also AI and even public health surely have instances where "scientifically rational" governance is foiled by public opposition - ideas welcome!

We offer some ideas for how contestation can be facilitated and social license to operate can be understood in anticipation of, rather than in reaction to, environmental policy debates. Read more here or DM me for a PDF copy
doi.org/10.1016/j.ma...

Contestation should therefore be invited as part of the policy process, not shied away from! Natural scientists work to resolve uncertainties about marine environments, and social scientists can ensure that stakeholder concerns are understood even before contestation begins!

The interesting thing is that, at least for now, support AND opposition to mesopelagic fishing can be backed by science, and the scientists we spoke to didn't agree. So while it's important to resolve scientific uncertainties, values and worldviews also cause disagreement, even amongst scientists.

Turning to mesopelagic fishing, social science methodologies really delivered: Through stakeholder consultation we identified contested facets of mesopelagic fishing, even though it has only really been performed experimentally! Not a crystal ball, but insight into how legitimacy is built

(This of course makes one think of the greatest example of "science is not enough": climate change! We have known about the adverse effects of CO2 emissions for more than a century, but scientific consensus has been far less important than political will)

See the paper for more, but the short version is that public and political contestation was not solved by more scientific certainty. Rather, conflicting personal interests, moral beliefs, and compatibility with existing institutions underpinned opposing views.

What WAS available: willing stakeholders and three analogous case studies (reduction fisheries, pulse fishing, and deep-sea mining). We used a legitimacy framework to untangle why some activities go ahead without opposition while others are hotly contested.

My co-authors and I started out with an assignment: try to understand what the social acceptability of future deep-sea fishing might be. We quickly realised that this is empirically challenging - asking people whether they would support some faraway and hypothetical activity isn't so robust.