How do resource mobility and group size affect institutional arrangements for rule enforcement? A qualitative comparative analysis of fishing groups in South Korea

Hoon C. Shin, David J. Yu, Samuel Park, John M. Anderies, Joshua K. Abbott, Marco A. Janssen and T.K. Ahn

Ecological Economics, 2020, vol. 174, issue C

Abstract: Two social feedbacks critical for redressing decline in organizational performance are exit (changing membership to a better performing organization) and voice (members' expression of discontent). In self-governing organizations of common-pool resources (CPRs) experiencing decline from poor rule conformance, the exit option is often unavailable due to a closed membership policy. Thus, members should rely on the voice option to reverse the trend. However, it is poorly understood under what set of conditions members can successfully use the voice option to govern their CPRs. We analyzed 30 self-governing fishing groups in South Korea to generate configurations of institutional and social-ecological conditions linked to the successful voice option. We considered Ostrom's Design Principles for rule enforcement as institutional conditions and resource mobility and group size as social-ecological factors affecting institutional fit. We find that if the informal mechanism for conflict resolution is absent, fishing groups will be unsuccessful; even if rules for monitoring and graduated sanctions are not in use, groups can be successful when they harvest only stationary resources and the informal conflict-resolution is present; and groups managing mobile resources need graduated sanctions to be successful, while those appropriating only stationary resources can achieve the same outcome without such sanctions.

Keywords: Common-pool resources; Design principles; Voice option; Resource mobility; Group size; Institutional fit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:174:y:2020:i:c:s0921800919313692

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106657

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