New publication in Marine Policy

Dražen Cepić, Ivan Puzek, and Hugo M. Ballesteros published “What affects legitimacy in capture fisheries? Analysis of socio-structural factors” in Marine Policy (Woss, Q1). Legitimacy motivates fishers to voluntarily accept institutional rules and decisions. While it is known that higher legitimacy is linked to greater compliance, less is understood about the social and institutional factors shaping it. This study examines five such factors—communication, personal networks, trust in institutions, economic vulnerability, and professionalization—using a sample of 567 Croatian fishers from large-scale, small-scale, subsistence, and recreational sectors.

Results show that legitimacy emerges from the interplay of social and institutional structures rather than regulatory design alone, emphasizing governance approaches that build trust and adapt to sectoral differences.

Read the paper here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0308597X25004385.