Integrated Pathways for Fishers’ Wellbeing: Evidence from Scenario-Based Systems Modelling

The Scottish Nephrops (Nephrops norvegicus) fishery operates under persistent dual pressures: economic dependence on the fishery for livelihoods, and ecological constraints associated with stock sustainability and environmental protection. Policy and industry debates are typically framed around these two priorities, often presenting economic growth and environmental conservation as opposing logics. While both are central to fisheries governance, wellbeing - understood as the integrated outcome of economic security, environmental quality, governance, and lived human experience - remains weakly articulated and rarely assessed systematically. As a result, discussions of fisheries futures remain largely normative, with limited empirical evidence on how alternative policy approaches perform across interconnected wellbeing dimensions.

This study examines how different policy-centred intervention logics influence wellbeing within the Scottish Nephrops fishery, when assessed as a single interconnected system. Using a participatory approach and fuzzy cognitive mapping, stakeholders co-produced a wellbeing framework, capturing perceived causal relationships among indicators spanning economic, social, environmental, and governance domains. The resulting map was formalised as a fuzzy logic model and used to simulate three stakeholder-defined intervention scenarios: an Economic scenario focused on financial access and productivity; an Environmental scenario prioritising ecological protection and regulatory strength; and a Holistic scenario integrating levers across multiple domains. A Baseline scenario was also estimated to capture endogenous system dynamics.

Scenario propagation reveals distinct and contrasting wellbeing redistribution patterns. Single-domain interventions generate strong but localised and often asymmetric effects, producing unintended side-effects across wellbeing dimensions. In contrast, the Holistic configuration produces more balanced and widely distributed changes, activating reinforcing pathways across domains while avoiding deep negative effects. Across analyses, wellbeing outcomes are shaped by the structure of the system itself, with inter-domain connectivity determining the capacity for integrated change.

The findings demonstrate the value of assessing fisheries policies within a shared systemic wellbeing framework and suggest that interventions aligned with network structure are better able to support resilient and balanced wellbeing outcomes. This approach offers a practical pathway for moving beyond entrenched growth–conservation trade-offs toward more integrated fisheries governance.