In the context of collaborative resource management, mental models can provide insights on participants’ understanding of the resource management system and in so doing allow researchers and practitioners to derive lessons about the success or failure of comanagement approaches. We analyzed individual and group mental models in the comanaged small-scale fishery of La Encrucijada, Mexico, active since 2009. Mental models reveal a strong consensus around the idea that the comanagement initiative is a government-led partnership to subsidize fishers. This belief reflects a history of state paternalism and coexists with a diversity of views about who are the actors involved in comanagement, their role in the fishery, and the resources mobilized through comanagement. We argue that local participants’ limited understanding of the collaborative mechanisms established by the comanagement initiative suggests a failure of the promoting actors to communicate the initiative’s environmental and social goals and to exploit its transformative potential in terms of actors’ empowerment and participation in the long term. This research contributes to the burgeoning literature on the use of mental models as a means to unravel the cognitive aspects that may lie underneath the success or failure of natural resource governance.

中文翻译：

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共同管理提供什么？通过心理模型在墨西哥La Encrucijada生物圈保护区的渔业中探索用户的知识

在协作资源管理的背景下，心理模型可以提供有关参与者对资源管理系统理解的见解，从而使研究人员和从业人员可以得出有关协同管理方法成败的经验教训。我们分析了自2009年以来一直活跃的墨西哥La Encrucijada共同管理的小型渔业中的个人和团体心理模型。心理模型揭示了围绕共同管理计划是政府主导的伙伴关系以资助渔民这一想法的强烈共识。这种信仰反映了国家家长制的历史，并与谁并存，对于谁参与共同管理的行为者，他们在渔业中的作用以及通过共同管理筹集的资源存在着多种观点。我们认为，当地参与者对共同管理计划所建立的协作机制的了解有限，这表明促进参与者未能长期宣传参与者的计划的环境和社会目标，也无法充分发挥其在参与者的赋权和参与方面的变革潜力。这项研究为有关使用心理模型作为揭示自然资源治理成败背后的认知方面的手段的新兴文献做出了贡献。