Table A1:
Descriptive statistics of fishing activity in Lázaro Cárdenas Reservoir: n=89.
| Variable description | Unit | Avg. | Var | Std dev | Min | Max | Delicias | Palmito | Victoria |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Community | # fishers | 39 | 35 | 15 | |||||
| Age | Years | 44.6 | 259.7 | 16.1 | 16 | 90 | 42.6 | 45.8 | 47.1 |
| Family size | Number | 4.4 | 5.5 | 2.3 | 1 | 15 | 4.3 | 4.4 | 4.5 |
| People <15 years old | Number | 1.1 | 1.9 | 1.4 | – | 6 | 1.0 | 0.9 | 1.7 |
| Years of school | Years | 6.0 | 6.3 | 2.5 | – | 12 | 6.0 | 5.6 | 6.7 |
| Fisher experience | Years | 23.9 | 223.8 | 15.0 | 1 | 60 | 20.7 | 27.4 | 24.4 |
| Labor | Hr/week | 26.7 | 194.2 | 13.9 | – | 63 | 20.3 | 36.1 | 22.0 |
| Catch Jan (p/week) | Kg | 153.1 | 46,371 | 215.3 | – | 1150 | 151.3 | 170.0 | 119.7 |
| Revenue Jan (p/week) | $000* | 2.9 | 12,436 | 3.5 | – | 19 | 2.7 | 3.0 | 3.2 |
| Catch last week | Kg | 92.3 | 19,759 | 140.6 | – | 920 | 61.1 | 137.9 | 69.7 |
| Revenue last week | $000* | 1.4 | 1855 | 1.4 | – | 8 | 1.1 | 1.9 | 1.0 |
| Nets used last week | # nets | 6.6 | 13.6 | 3.7 | – | 15 | 6.5 | 7.4 | 4.9 |
| Days fishing | # days | 5.7 | 3.0 | 1.7 | – | 7 | 5.4 | 6.0 | 6.1 |
| Gas cost | ($ week)* | 275.8 | 69,542 | 263.7 | – | 1400 | 242.3 | 324.7 | 251.6 |
| Boat length | Mt | 4.3 | 0.6 | 0.8 | 3 | 6 | 4.2 | 4.4 | 4.2 |
| Engine power | HP | 20.0 | 50.0 | 7.1 | 5 | 48 | 20.0 | 21.9 | 14.1 |
| Age of the boat | Years | 14.9 | 87.0 | 9.3 | 1 | 50 | 14.0 | 16.3 | 14.2 |
| Age of motor | Years | 11.4 | 84.1 | 9.2 | 0 | 35 | 11.0 | 11.0 | 13.7 |
| Fixed cost | $ (000)* | 16.0 | 180,517 | 13.4 | – | 64 | 13.4 | 19.9 | 14.0 |
| Nets cost | $ (000)* | 1.2 | 573 | 0.8 | – | 3 | 1.2 | 1.5 | 0.8 |
| Maintenance cost | $ (000)* | 0.9 | 1933 | 1.4 | – | 7 | 0.8 | 1.3 | 0.5 |
| Number of dependents | # people | 3.1 | 3.4 | 1.8 | – | 9 | 3.0 | 3.2 | 2.9 |
| Income from fishing | $000* | 0.5–0.6 | 0.8–1.0 | 0.2–0.3 | <0.2 | >1.5 | 0.3–0.4 | 0.6–0.7 | 0.4–0.5 |
| Total income last week | $000* | 1–2 | <1 | <1 | <1 | 6–7 | <1 | 1–2 | 1–2 |
*All monetary values are in Mexican pesos.
Table 1:
Proposed characteristics to analyze the potential for the adoption of self-governance.
| Ostrom (1990) | Dietz et al. (2003) | Ostrom (2009) |
|---|---|---|
| (1) ‘most users’ conclude that they will be harmed if they do not adopt new rules (2) ‘most users’ conclude that they will be affected in a similar way by the new rules (3) ‘most users’ highly value continuing the activity (4) users share generalized norms of reciprocity and trust (5) users face low monitoring and enforcement cost (6) users are a small and stable group | (1) low monitoring cost; (2) changes in resource technology, population, and socio economic conditions take place at moderate rates (3) users have direct and frequent communications and trust each other (4) outsiders can be excluded at low cost (5) users themselves can monitor and enforce their collective agreements | (1) size of resource system (2) productivity of system (3) predictability of system dynamics (4) resource unit mobility (5) number of users (6) leadership (7) norms/social capital (8) knowledge of the SES (9) importance of resource to the users (10) collective-choice rules |
Table 2:
Indirect and direct questions related to Ostrom conditions 1, 2 and 3 (OC1, 2, 3).1
Unless marked with a *, questions are of the form, “How much do you agree or disagree with the following statement…?
Notes:
The survey was administered in Spanish and this table presents a translation of those questions. The authors will make available the original survey instrument in Spanish upon request.
&The scale was reversed (i.e. 2 was converted to 4, and 1 to 5) to have an equivalent direction on the responses
aThe Ostrom Conditions (OC1-OC6) are stated in Table 1
bW: Working statement of the OCfrom Table 1; D: Direct question regarding the OC; I+: Indirect question regarding the OC with standard coding; I-: Indirect question regarding the OC with reverse coding;
cAnswer types, all on a 1-5 scale as follows:
L(1-5): It is the most typical answer on our Likert scale: 1.Strongly disagree, 2.Disagree, 3.Don’t know, 4. Agree, 5.Strongly agree
L(A): 1.Very low, 2.Low, 3.Don’t know, 4.High, 5.Very high
L(B): 1.There is no trust at all, 2.Not good, 3.Don’t know, 4.Good, 5.Very good
L(C): 1.Very expensive, 2.Expensive, 3.Don’t know, 4.Cheap, 5.Very cheap
L(D): 1.Increased a lot, 2.Increased, 3.No change, 4.Decreased, 5.Decreased a lot
L(E): 1.Increase, 2.May be increase, 3. No change, 4.May be decrease, 5.Decrease
L(F): 1.Decreased a lot, 2. Decreased, 3. No change, 4. Increased, 5. Increased a lot
L(G): 1.Not at all satisfied, 2.Not satisfied, 3.Don’t know, 4.Satisfied, 5.Very satisfied
Table 3:
Correlation on answers to indirect positive and indirect negative 
questions, before (n =111) and after (n =74), reliability improvement.
| q1 | q2 | q3 | q4 | q5 | q6 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Complete data set (n=111): | –0.03 | –0.18 | –0.11 | –0.10 | –0.01 | 0.06 |
Reliable data set (n=74): | –0.20 | –0.51 | –0.30 | –0.21 | –0.21 | –0.12 |
Table 4
Correlation between answers to direct Ostrom condition (DOCi) questions and the Ostrom condition indices of 
using a simple sum of 
and with PCA.
| DOC1 | DOC2 | DOC3 | DOC4 | DOC5 | DOC6 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
(n=111)  as a simple sum | 0.270 | 0.080 | 0.270 | 0.110 | 0.060 | 0.380 |
(n=74)  as a simple sum | 0.309 | 0.068 | 0.441 | 0.260 | 0.146 | 0.461 |
(n=74)  with PCA | 0.310 | 0.069 | 0.420 | 0.219 | 0.130 | 0.501 |
Table 5:
Descriptive statistics of Ostrom condition indices (OCi) in percentage values.
| OCi indexes | 1–5 scale* | 1–4 scale | Std dev | Median | Mode | Min | Max |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OC1 | 74% | 72% | 15% | 67% | 67% | 44% | 100% |
| OC2 | 82% | 79% | 16% | 75% | 75% | 68% | 100% |
| OC3 | 70% | 68% | 33% | 77% | 75% | 63% | 100% |
| OC4 | 75% | 71% | 14% | 75% | 75% | 45% | 95% |
| OC5 | 78% | 75% | 15% | 75% | 75% | 63% | 100% |
| OC6 | 51% | 53% | 31% | 50% | 75% | 25% | 100% |
| OCi Avg | 72% | 71% | 10% | 74% | 74% | 48% | 95% |
Note: *For comparison purposes we keep the original scale 1–5, second column, presented in percentage values. All remaining analysis uses results from the 1– 4 rescaling.
Figure 1:
Frequencies of the six OC indices.
Figure 2:
A joint representation of the six Ostrom conditions indexes.
Figure 3:
Relationship between potential for self-governance (OC’s average) and fisher’s revenue at Lázaro Cárdenas reservoir