Improving compliance around protected areas through fair administration of rules.

Protected area management often depends heavily on law enforcement to secure compliance with rules. However, this can contribute to conflict between protected area authorities and local people, negatively affecting both human well-being and conservation outcomes. Compliance is affected by many factors, including whether those who enforce rules are perceived to do so fairly, as well as the perceived rule-related behavior of others. We used factorial survey experiments to explore how fair respondents living around protected areas in Indonesia and Tanzania perceive sanctions distributed by law enforcers to be. We presented scenarios to respondents to assess how crime type, offender characteristics, and corruption influenced their judgments regarding the fairness of administered sanctions. We also assessed how descriptive norms and corruption influenced individuals' willingness to obey protected area rules. Data were collected from 229 people in Indonesia and 217 in Tanzania. Results showed that in both locations, lawful sanctions, such as arrests or warnings, were perceived as fairer, and sanctions that involved corruption were perceived as least fair. Attitudes toward protected area rules, corruption, and descriptive norms all influenced people's willingness to comply, whereas multidimensional poverty did not. Our results highlight the need for conservation policy and practice to move beyond narratives that focus on the need for more law enforcement. To improve protected area compliance and secure better outcomes for people and nature, conservation must focus on ensuring the fair administration of rules and enhancing the legitimacy of rules themselves.

Mejoras en el cumplimiento alrededor de las áreas protegidas mediante la administración imparcial de reglas Resumen El manejo de áreas protegidas casi siempre depende de la aplicación de la ley para asegurar el cumplimiento de las reglas. Sin embargo, esto puede contribuir al conflicto entro las autoridades de las áreas protegidas y los locales, lo que afecta negativamente al bienestar humano y a los resultados de conservación. El cumplimiento se ve afectado por muchos factores, incluido si se percibe que quienes aplican las reglas lo hacen de manera imparcial, así como el comportamiento relacionado a las reglas de las demás. Aplicamos experimentos de censo factorial para explorar cómo los respondientes imparciales que viven en torno a las áreas protegidas en Indonesia y Tanzania perciben las sanciones distribuidas por los agentes de la ley. Les presentamos escenarios para analizar cómo el tipo de crimen, características del ofensor y la corrupción influyen sobre sus juicios con respecto a la imparcialidad de las sanciones administradas. También analizamos cómo las normas descriptivas y la corrupción influyen sobre la voluntad individual de obedecer las reglas del área protegida. Recolectamos los datos de 299 personas en Indonesia y 217 en Tanzania. Los resultados mostraron que, en ambas localidades, las sanciones legales, como arrestos o advertencias, eran percibidas como más justas, y las sanciones que involucraban corrupción eran percibidas como las menos justas. Todas las actitudes hacia las reglas de las áreas protegidas, la corrupción y las normas descriptivas influyeron sobre la voluntad de las personas para obedecer, mientras que la pobreza multidimensional no influyó. Nuestros resultados enfatizan la necesidad de que las políticas y prácticas de conservación vayan más allá de las narrativas que se enfocan en la necesidad de una mayor aplicación de la ley. Para incrementar el cumplimiento en las áreas protegidas y asegurar mejores resultados para las personas y la naturaleza, la conservación debe enfocarse en garantizar la administración imparcial de las reglas e incrementar su legitimidad.

Topic sensitivity still affects honest responding, even when specialized questioning techniques are used.

To develop more effective interventions, conservationists require robust information about the proportion of people who break conservation rules (such as those relating to protected species, or protected area legislation). Developed to obtain more accurate estimates of sensitive behaviors, including rule-breaking, specialized questioning techniques such as Randomized Response Techniques (RRTs) are increasingly applied in conservation, but with mixed evidence of their effectiveness. We use a forced-response RRT to estimate the prevalence of five rule-breaking behaviors in communities living around the Ruaha-Rungwa ecosystem in Tanzania. Prevalence estimates obtained for all behaviors were negative or did not differ significantly from zero, suggesting the RRT did not work as expected and that respondents felt inadequately protected. To investigate, we carried out a second study to explore how topic sensitivity influenced respondents' propensity to follow RRT instructions. Results from this experimental study revealed respondents understood instructions well (~88% of responses were correct) but that propensity to follow RRT instructions was significantly influenced by the behavior asked about, and the type of answer they were required to provide. Our two studies highlight that even if RRTs are well understood by respondents, where topics are sensitive and respondents are wary of researchers, their use does not necessarily encourage more honest responding.