Special Issue Article: Conservation Crime Estimating non-compliance among recreational fishers: Insights into factors affecting the usefulness of the Randomized Response and Item Count Techniques Alyssa S. Thomas a,⇑ , Michael C. Gavin a,b , Taciano L. Milfont c a School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand b Department of Human Dimensions of Natural Resources, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA c School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand article info Article history: Received 1 February 2014 Received in revised form 24 September 2014 Accepted 30 September 2014 Available online xxxx Keywords: Conservation management Illegal fishing Indirect questioning Methodological study Sensitive behaviours Violation rates abstract Non-compliance with fishing regulations has a critical influence on the success of the associated manage- ment regime. Yet, estimating the extent of non-compliance is challenging in part because of the sensitive nature of the subject and direct questioning is likely to result in low estimates. This study tested the effectiveness of two indirect methods, Randomized Response Technique (RRT) and Item Count Technique (ICT), in providing higher and more accurate estimates of recreational fishing non-compliance than tra- ditional direct questioning (DQ) in the Marlborough Sounds blue cod fishery, New Zealand. Although RRT provided a higher non-compliance estimate than ICT and DQ for one of the three regulations (size limit), ICT failed to provide a higher estimate than DQ for any of the three regulations. We suggest that the online mode of the survey, behaviour frequency and question sensitivity (although not measured) had a strong influence on our findings. The version of RRT used, offering increased privacy protection for respondents, is also likely to have contributed to its performance against ICT. This study is the first to use the same sample population for all methods, eliminating potentially confounding socio-demographic factors and providing more confidence in attributing differences to the method used. Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction 1.1. Measuring and monitoring non-compliance Non-compliance with conservation regulations has become a significant problem worldwide (Eliason, 1999; Gavin et al., 2009). It threatens conservation efforts (Bose and Crees-Morris, 2009), contributes to over-exploitation of natural resources, hinders the recovery of both biological populations and ecosystems (Agnew et al., 2009), lowers genetic diversity (Whitehouse and Harley, 2001), disrupts ecosystem stability and productivity (Gubbay, 1995), and has wider consequences for food supplies (Brashares et al., 2004) and the human communities that depend on them (Pratt et al., 2004). Fisheries are not immune to this threat (Sumaila et al., 2006), as 80% of the world’s marine fish stocks are either fully exploited or overexploited (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2012). Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing is a major contributor to fisheries’ collapses worldwide (United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), 2006), and IUU is often cited as one of the principal causes behind the failure of fisheries man- agement programmes (Boonstra and Bach Dang, 2010; Sutinen et al., 1990). This non-compliance is due, at least in part, to the common property nature of the resource and the expense of mon- itoring and enforcing regulations (Anderson, 1989), which are often numerous and constantly changing (Jentoft, 2004). Historically, governments and conservation organisations have been hindered by a lack of knowledge on the full extent of illegal resource use, as the number of people caught breaking the law is estimated to be only a small percentage of violators (Elffers et al., 2003). This discrepancy is important as effective management will be difficult without knowledge of the true amount of non- compliance (Smith et al., 1989). This has resulted in calls to prior- itise better data collection on wildlife crimes (Wellsmith, 2011), particularly on the proportion of non-compliance and to quantify how much of the resource is being lost (Smith and Anderson, 2004). However, determining the extent of non-compliance in a fishery presents both practical and methodological challenges http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2014.09.048 0006-3207/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +64 273529571. E-mail addresses: choiceofluthien@gmail.com (A.S. Thomas), Michael.Gavin@ colostate.edu (M.C. Gavin), Taciano.Milfont@vuw.ac.nz (T.L. Milfont). Biological Conservation xxx (2014) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Biological Conservation journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/biocon Please cite this article in press as: Thomas, A.S., et al. Estimating non-compliance among recreational fishers: Insights into factors affecting the usefulness of the Randomized Response and Item Count Techniques. Biol. Conserv. (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2014.09.048