A project, firm or industry whose activities are accepted by communities and stakeholders is said to have a social licence to operate. The importance of a social licence is increasingly being realized in natural resource industries where a project or firm can impose more environmental and social costs, e.g. pollution, or strain on service delivery and housing, on communities than they are willing to accept. However, the conditions that are necessary and/or sufficient to obtain/maintain a social licence are unclear. To rectify this gap, a global literature review paired with a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis of 47 natural resource case studies from 25 countries was used to identify the conditions necessary and/or sufficient to: (1) obtain or lose a social licence; (2) result in voluntary practice change by firms; and/or (3) create regulatory change. No single condition out of the ten conditions tested was found to be necessary to obtain or lose a social licence or to change firm behavior. However, a combination of five conditions created a robust pathway for maintaining a social licence, including: (1) delivery (or perception) of net economic benefits beyond the firm; (2) adequate stakeholder consultation; (3) minimal media coverage; (4) minimal public protests; and/or (5) absence of well-defined and enforced private property rights. These results contribute to an understanding of the somewhat limited effectiveness of social licence as a form of governance, and suggest that social licence outcomes are determined by the expectations of stakeholders, decisions and behaviors of firms, and broader institutional governance factors.

其活动被社区和利益相关者接受的项目、公司或行业被称为具有运营的社会许可。自然资源行业越来越意识到社会许可的重要性，在这些行业中，项目或公司可能会给社区带来比他们愿意接受的更多的环境和社会成本，例如污染或服务提供和住房的压力。但是，获得/维持社会许可的必要和/或充分条件尚不清楚。为了弥补这一差距，全球文献综述与对来自 25 个国家的 47 个自然资源案例研究的模糊集定性比较分析相结合，用于确定必要和/或充分的条件：(1) 获得或失去社会许可；(2) 导致企业自愿改变做法；和/或 (3) 创造监管变革。在测试的十个条件中，没有一个条件是获得或失去社会执照或改变公司行为所必需的。然而，五个条件的组合为维持社会许可创造了一条强有力的途径，包括：(1) 网络交付（或感知）超出公司的经济利益；(2) 充分的利益相关者协商；(3) 最少的媒体报道；(4) 最少的公众抗议；和/或 (5) 缺乏明确定义和强制执行的私有财产权。这些结果有助于理解作为一种治理形式的社会许可的有效性有限，并表明社会许可的结果取决于利益相关者的期望、公司的决策和行为以及更广泛的制度治理因素。