Copyright © 2012 by the author(s). Published here under license by the Resilience Alliance. Gilmour, P. W., R. W. Day, and P. D. Dwyer. 2012. Using private rights to manage natural resources: is stewardship linked to ownership? Ecology and Society 17(3): 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-04770-170301 Research Using Private Rights to Manage Natural Resources: Is Stewardship Linked to Ownership? Patrick W. Gilmour 1 , Robert W. Day 1 , and Peter D. Dwyer 2 ABSTRACT. There is increasing interest in privatizing natural resource systems to promote sustainability and conservation goals. Though economic theory suggests owners of private property rights have an incentive to act as resource stewards, few studies have tested this empirically. This paper asks whether private rights-owners were more conservative with respect to their management opinions than nonrights-owners in five Australian abalone (Haliotis spp.) fisheries. Multiple regression analyses were used to link opinions to demographic, economic, and attitudinal variables. In contrast to standard economic assumptions, nonrights-owners suggested more conservative catch limits than did rights-owners, confirming qualitative observations of behavior in management workshops. Differing views about the condition of the resource and differing levels of experience contributed to these results. The first of its kind, this study directly demonstrates that private rights do not necessarily promote the greatest level of stewardship. This has substantial implications for how natural resources are governed globally, but also warns against applying simplistic behavioral assumptions to complex social-ecological systems. Key Words: Australia, comanagement, fisheries, individual transferable quota, property rights, stewardship, sustainable behavior INTRODUCTION Resource economists have long argued that privatization of natural resources, such as forests, fisheries, and rangelands, promotes economic efficiency (Gordon 1954, Chueng 1970, Johnson 1972). More recently, private rights have been advocated explicitly as a means of improving environmental goals (Gibson et al. 2002, Fujita and Bonzon 2005, Helson et al. 2010). The conventional wisdom is that, by internalizing the costs of resource use, ownership creates an incentive for stewardship (Grafton et al. 2006). In fisheries, for example, this proposed link has been used to argue that privatized catch shares will, and do, improve sustainability (Costello et al. 2008). However, the link between private rights and stewardship behavior is based largely on assumption. Because privatizing natural resources has far-reaching and long-term conservation and social implications (Bromley 2005, Sumaila 2010), there is a clear need to demonstrate empirically whether, and to what extent, that link actually exists. Our aim in the present study is to examine relationships between private property rights, in the form of individual transferable quota (ITQ), and resource stewardship. The data come from five, high-valued (ABARE- BRS 2010) abalone (Haliotis spp.) fisheries in southeast Australia. These fisheries are of particular interest because industry groups have, to varying degrees, adopted conservative self- management practices in addition to those stipulated by government managers (Gilmour et al. 2011). In this they provide cases of resource users voluntarily practicing stewardship behavior and resource management. Of greater significance, however, is the fact that in these fisheries, individuals who do not themselves own rights, i.e., divers contracted to harvest abalone, have had a substantial role in developing and implementing the self-management practices. This suggests that previously reported correlations between environmental benefits and private property (e.g., Costello et al. 2008) may not be a direct, or simple, consequence of privatization. In this paper we ask if there is a difference between the management preferences of quota owners, who hold private rights, and contract divers, who do not. We consider preferences for conservative management practices, such as reduced levels of allowable catch, to reflect the willingness of individuals to incur short-term costs in the interests of long- term resource sustainability, which, for the purposes of this paper, we take to be stewardship. Where differences are detected, we explore factors that may explain those differences. We consider some theoretical and practical issues relevant to the role of private rights in natural resource management. We describe the research context and methods. The latter entailed a survey of stakeholders designed to reveal preferences for different management strategies. In the results, we explore how these preferences varied between categories of stakeholders. Finally, we discuss the incentives experienced by different groups and direct attention to factors that may influence stewardship behavior, including some that are seldom considered in more conventional models of rational behavior. 1 Department of Zoology, The University of Melbourne, 2 Department of Resource Management and Geography, The University of Melbourne