Drivers of success, speed and performance in fisheries moving towards Marine Stewardship Council certification

With growing concerns about global overfishing, market-based eco-certification programs like the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) can incentivise adoption of sustainable practices. Several studies investigated drivers of improvement in market-driven Fisheries Improvement Projects, but failed to use detailed, standardised measures of progress, or considered small samples. We considered the relative influence market, governance and fishery-specific drivers have on MSC certification speed and success in 208 fisheries. To evaluate improvement we compared pre-certification scores from MSC pre-assessments—rapid high-level audits against the MSC Standard—to scores from full MSC audits. Drivers considered included measures of pre-assessment quality, as this initial advice might contribute to later certification success. National fishery management capacity, percentage of MSC catch and landed value were the strongest drivers of successful and rapid certification. Environmental improvements occurred for stock management, ecosystem health and governance aspects. While only 48% of fisheries with favourable pre-assessment outcomes went on to be certified, improvements in many fisheries with lower pre-assessment scores were observed in their lead-up to full assessment. Random forest analyses allowed for considering multiple interacting variables simultaneously and revealed influential drivers under specific fishery contexts. For example, higher certification probability was associated with greater percentage of MSC catch under the full dataset, but not under subsets representing fisheries facing more challenging contexts for certification. Fisheries from lower/middle-income countries had lower overall probability of certification, but this increased with higher management capacity. This suggests multiple drivers interact in instigating fisheries improvements, and MSC pre-assessments provide valuable resources to understand this journey.