Income diversification, social capital and their potential role in uptake of marine Payments for Environmental Services schemes: a study from a Tanzanian fishing community

We analyse the role of risk mitigating strategies upon the willingness to adopt a marine PES scheme in fishing households. More specifically we focus on the role income diversification and social capital can play. We find that income diversification and three social capital variables (trust, group membership and presence within a reciprocal fishing dependency network) emerged as significant predictors of willingness to adopt a proposed marine PES scheme. 4Results are, however, qualitatively different. Group membership and the presence of alternative income sources increased fisher willingness to participate within the proposed PES scheme. Trust was found to have a larger incremental influence on willingness to participate within those villages located outside of the park boundary. However, �presence within a reciprocal fishing dependency network� showed a negative correlation with willingness to participate. This reciprocal dependency relationship therefore appears to lock fishers in to their current status quo and dissuade participation in the PES scheme. We offer some explanations of the possible underlying mechanism behind this result. The results presented have valuable policy implications for those PES schemes which hope to target poor households.