Advocates, practitioners and policy-makers continue to use and advocate for marine protected areas (MPAs) to meet global ocean protection targets. Yet many of the worlds MPAs, and especially no-take MPAs, are plagued by poaching and ineffective governance. Using a global dataset on coral reefs as an example, we quantify the potential ecological gains of governing MPAs to increase compliance, which we call the ‘compliance gap’. Using ecological simulations based on model posteriors of joint Bayesian hierarchical models, we demonstrate how increased compliance in no-take MPAs could nearly double target fish biomass (91% increases in median fish biomass), and result in a 292% higher likelihood of encountering top predators. Achieving these gains and closing the compliance gap necessitates a substantial shift in approach and practice to go beyond optimizing enforcement, and towards governing for compliance. This will require engaging and integrating a broad suite of actors, principles, and practices across three key domains: (i)) harnessing social influence, (ii) integrating equity principles, and (iii) aligning incentives through market-based instruments. Empowering and shaping communication between actor groups (e.g., between fishers, practitioners, and policy-makers) using theoretically underpinned approaches from the behavioural sciences is one of the most essential, but often underserved aspects of governing MPAs. We therefore close by highlighting how this cross-cutting tool could be further integrated in governance to bolster high levels of compliance in MPAs.

中文翻译：

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用人类行为科学缩小海洋保护区的合规差距

倡导者、实践者和决策者继续使用和倡导海洋保护区 (MPA) 以实现全球海洋保护目标。然而，世界上许多海洋保护区，尤其是禁止捕捞的海洋保护区，都饱受偷猎和无效治理的困扰。以全球珊瑚礁数据集为例，我们量化了管理海洋保护区以提高合规性的潜在生态收益，我们称之为“合规差距”。使用基于联合贝叶斯分层模型模型后验的生态模拟，我们展示了提高禁捕海洋保护区的合规性如何使目标鱼类生物量增加近一倍（鱼类生物量中位数增加 91%），并导致遇到顶级鱼类的可能性提高 292%捕食者。实现这些收益并缩小合规差距需要在方法和实践上进行重大转变，以超越优化执法，转向合规治理。这将需要在三个关键领域参与和整合一系列广泛的参与者、原则和实践：(i)) 利用社会影响，(ii) 整合公平原则，以及 (iii) 通过基于市场的工具调整激励措施。使用行为科学的理论支持方法增强和塑造参与者群体之间（例如，渔民、从业者和政策制定者之间）的沟通是管理海洋保护区的最重要但往往服务不足的方面之一。因此，我们最后强调了如何将这种交叉工具进一步整合到治理中，以加强海洋保护区的高水平合规性。