Short Paper
The Relationship between Social Capital and the Level of Participation in Fishing Organizations of Sagñay, Camarines Sur, Philippines
2023 Volume 59 Issue 4 Pages 181-187
Details
2023 Volume 59 Issue 4 Pages 181-187
This study investigated the relationship between social capital (trust attitude) and the degree of fishermen’s participation in priority associations in villages near the MPA. To measure social capital, fishermen were asked to rate their level of trust in: fellow villagers in matters of lending and borrowing (Trust1), another member of a priority association in matters of lending and borrowing (Trust2), and barangay officials (Trust3). Correlation and path analyses were used to test the relationships between trust attitudes, degree of participation, and associated exogenous variables. The fishermen actively participated in the activities of the association. The data analysis showed that trust attitude variables were significantly correlated with each other, but that the degree of participation was only significantly correlated with Trust1 and Trust2. Household size and years of residence were significantly associated with the degree of participation in fishermen’s organizations.
A marine protected area (MPA) is an important tool for coastal resource management. It refers to any area whose limits have been set up to provide a specific level of management with the primary goal of safeguarding the site’s natural resources. MPAs, in the form of reserves, sanctuaries, and parks, are broadly known as coastal resource management strategies all over the country, and they are being supported by local government units and national government agencies (Ballad et al. 2016). Marine ecosystems are under constant threat from overfishing, marine pollution, land transformation, and climate change as a result of population growth and rapid economic development. The Philippines is home to numerous MPAs that were established, particularly to address coastal resource problems (Ito et al., 2017). Globally, MPAs have comparatively failed to achieve biodiversity goals (Diedrich et al., 2016). And in the case of the Philippines, only 20–25% are successfully managed (Crawford et al., 2000), and the remaining MPAs are unsuccessful in meeting their main objective (Pollnac et al., 2001; Maypa et al., 2012). This can be a result of inadequate financial and human resources to manage the Philippines’ coastal resources sustainably (Christie et al., 2002). MPA is difficult to manage alone. Local residents’ participation is needed.
Social capital can foster cooperation and mutually beneficial relationships in communities as well as nations, making it a great tool for tackling many social issues that are present in current societies, like coastal resource problems. The theory of social capital has evolved as a useful utility concept. According to Portes (1998), there is a growing agreement that social capital refers to an actor’s ability to secure benefits by virtue of membership in social networks or other social structures. According to Putnam (1995a), social capital makes the community’s life easier, considering that there is a strong communal component to it, it is assumed that the more networks individuals have with one another, the more they will trust one another, and the better off they are both individually and as a group. This implies that individuals who are connected with each other, like the members of an organization, have a higher chance of trusting their co-members because of their exposure to individuals through the several activities in which they are participating. When we solicit the assistance of others, whether acquaintances, friends, or family members, we are utilizing social capital (Briggs, 1998). The main elements of social capital for Putnam are trust and cooperation (Gittell and Vidal, 1998). As research on social capital progressed, three common components emerged: social networks, trust, and social norms (Rogers and Jarema, 2015). This study used trust as a social capital index. Trust serves as a direct measure of social capital or even an input or output indicator (Grootaert and Bastelaer, 2002) and social capital is an important condition of social unity, economic productivity, and democratic harmony (Coleman, 1988; Putnam, 1995b). Trust enables the preservation of composure in social relationships, which serves as the foundation of fruitful collaboration within civil society (Newton, 2001). It reflects the civil connections and solidarity that people have with one another.
Since our previous study about the willingness to work or pay (WTW/WTP) of fishermen with regard to the management of the MPA showed that trust, as a social capital variable, is a significant factor that influences fishermen’s WTW/WTP; this means that developing social capital in the form of trust within the communities may contribute to successful management and may reduce transaction costs (dela Vega et al., 2023), in this next study, we investigated the relationship between social capital trust attitudes of the respondents and their level of participation in primary fishing organizations. This also determined the factors affecting trust and the level of participation of the respondents. We hypothesize that the level of participation is important in deciding the social capital of residents in the community, which is vital in promoting effective coastal resource management. This study contributes to how to increase social capital, in particular the trust of the villagers, which is a contributing factor to successful MPA management. It is important to study the relationship between social capital and the level of participation as well as the factors influencing it because it allows individuals to work together for a common goal, such as sustainable coastal management, and people can benefit from social connections.
The Philippines (Fig. 1) has a large coastal community. Sagñay belongs to the 4th district of Camarines Sur Province in the Philippines. It has a total land area of 15,476 hectares comprised of 19 villages. This town has abundant natural resources whose primary sources of income are fishing and farming. The fishing grounds cover a total of 12,358km2 of municipal waters, and the coastline measures 24,736m.
Location map showing the Camarines Sur, Philippines
Kuroshio Current starts from Bicol (Soliman, 2013). It is a productive major current system that connects the Philippines and Japan in the Western Pacific (Bradecina et al., 2017). Nato and Atulayan villages in Sagñay, Camarines Sur are areas that surround the Lagonoy Gulf, which is the root of Kuroshio Current. This current system is responsible for the rich marine ecosystem such as the MPA and fisheries between Japan and the Philippines.
In 1993, the Atulayan MPA, or the Atulayan Bay Fish Sanctuary and Marine Reserve (official MPA name), was established by the municipal government through the initiative of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR), and this is considered one of the pioneer MPAs in the Bicol region with an area of 288 ha. There are two established fish sanctuaries in the Atulayan MPA, specifically, the Atulayan Fish Sanctuary I with 42.28 ha and buffer zone of 55.57 ha, and the Atulayan Fish Sanctuary II with 23.36 ha and a buffer zone of 12.96 ha. The MPA is being managed by the municipality through bantay-dagat (sea patrol) and with the help of the village officials and local residents. The MPA is surrounded by six coastal villages, including Atulayan and Nato. Atulayan is an island village, it has relatively rich resources due to the presence of coral reefs. Nato is a village near the town center that is one of the gateways going to Atulayan. Nato has the biggest population percentage of 11.08%, while Atulayan village has 2.28% in Sagñay district.
Table 1 shows the main organizations that were considered in the study: the fishermen’s associations (Sagñay Tuna Fishers Association and Nato Rigaton Association).
Fishermen Priority Organizations
| Name | Vision/Goal |
|---|---|
| Nato Rigaton Association (NARIA) | To create livelihood to members through sustainable fishing and to help elevate the welfare of members. |
| Sagñay Tuna Fishers Association (STFA) | To ensure sustainable fishery resources through collective and collaborative efforts among tuna fishers and other stakeholders to strengthen fishery law enforcement, advocate fishery governance, adopt responsible fishing practices and capacitate tuna fishers on sustainable management. |
Source: From the interview.
A questionnaire was developed and used to interview a total of 515 respondents who were randomly selected from a list of registered fishermen in the two villages, Nato and Atulayan. This instrument was designed to formulate an economic valuation of protecting Atulayan MPA using fishermen’s WTW/WTP, which also contains a survey on the trust and cooperation of the residents in these selected villages. Enumerators were trained before conducting the survey. The local dialect in the study areas was used during the household survey from the end of August 2018 to early February 2019 and a follow-up interview from July to September 2022. This study mainly focuses on investigating the association of participation of fishermen in the primary organizations (NARIA and STFA) with their social capital. Respondents in each village were asked to rate their level of participation (4-leader, 3-very active, 2-somewhat active, and 1-not active) in the priority organization and their trust (5-strongly trust, 4-trust, 3-undecided, 2-don’t trust, and 1-strongly distrust) to fellow villagers in matters of lending and borrowing (Trust1), to another member of a priority association in matters of lending and borrowing (Trust2), and to barangay (village) officials (Trust3). We included an example scenario in terms of trust in order for the respondents to have a clear and easy understanding of the question. Officers and staff of the organizations were interviewed to determine the activities being implemented by the association.
Not all survey respondents are members of the priority organizations. In the data analysis, we used only an extracted subset of our data which includes the responses of those samples that are members of priority organizations. This subset consists of a total of 341 observations, which includes 68 out of 110 samples from Atulayan, and 273 out of 405 samples from Nato. All Nato sub-samples are participating in NARIA, while all Atulayan sub-samples are participating in STFA.
We applied quantitative methods to explore relationships between social capital (trust attitude variables) and participation. Spearman’s rank correlation, a non-parametric alternative to Pearson’s correlation for ordinal data, was used to measure the strength and direction of the monotonic relationship of these variables. Moreover, path analysis was used to explore the pattern of causal relationships among the trust attitude variables, degree of participation, and some exogenous variables. The goodness of fit statistics of the path model was determined using the standard indices, such as Root Mean Square Error Approximation (RMSEA), Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR), Comparative Fit Index (CFI), Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI), and Goodness of Fit Index (GFI). Path analysis can be regarded as an extension of multiple regression, which is used to examine the extent to which the observed data fit the hypothesized patterns of causal relationships. In this study, we discern the hypothesized relationships among trust attitudes (Trust1, Trust2, and Trust3) with the degree of participation (LPart) and exogenous variables, as described in Table 2. The exogenous variables that were deemed associated with the above variables were years in school (FS), household size (HHsize), household income (HHinc), and years in residency (Res). We note that path analysis only clarifies correlation and indicates the relationship among variables, but cannot determine the direction of causality which can be determined through appropriate experimental studies. The correlation and path analyses were carried out with the use of Jamovi statistical program (version 2.3.21) which is a free and open-source interface for R programming language that is used for data analysis and statistical tests. In path analysis, we particularly used the PATHj module which is a Jamovi interface for lavaan R package.
Variables used in the path analysis
| Variable | Description | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Trust1 | 5-point scale reflecting respondents’ perception on villagers’ trust in one another in terms of lending and borrowing | ordinal |
| Trust2 | 5-point scale reflecting respondents’ perception on villagers’ trust in another member of the priority association in terms of lending and borrowing | ordinal |
| Trust3 | 5-point scale reflecting respondents’ perception on villagers’ trust in barangay leaders | ordinal |
| LPart | 4-point scale reflecting respondent’s degree of participation in the priority associations | ordinal |
| FS | Number of years in schooling | ratio |
| HHsize | Number of household members | ratio |
| HHinc | Household monthly income | ratio |
| Res | Number of years residing in the village | ratio |
The information in Table 3 is about the village profile and the average of the socio-economic characteristics of respondents from Atulayan and Nato, respectively. This gives background about the villages and the fishermen in the study sites. The respondents’ main source of income is fishing. Besides this, the following are their sources of income: farming, selling fish and other goods, and wages or salaries from jobs other than fishing.
Profile of the village and fishermen
| Parameters/Village | Atulayan (n=68) | Nato (n=273) |
|---|---|---|
| Village Profile | ||
| Total population as of 2020 | 841 | 4,081 |
| Land area (ha)1) | 119 | 102 |
| Coastline (km)1) | 1 | 2 |
| Distance from town’s center (km)1) | 8 | 2 |
| Socio-economic characteristics [Average (±SD)] | ||
| No. of years in schooling | 6.21 (±2.30) | 8.41 (±3.82) |
| Years of residency | 43.18 (±16.80) | 38.30 (±16.50) |
| HH size | 5.12 (±2.25) | 5.87 (±2.46) |
| HH member involved in fishing related activities | 1.31 (±0.70) | 1.60 (±0.87) |
| HH monthly income2) | 11,066.18 (±9,173) | 12,931.28 (±8,627) |
| Income’s source (%) | ||
| - Fishing only | 51.47 | 58.97 |
| - Fishing and other works | 48.53 | 41.02 |
Sources: Philippine Statistics Authority (2021) and Survey.
1) Estimation based on Google Earth (approximation).
2) Philippine peso, 1 Php=2.07 Yen as of September 2018.
3) The “n” represents the number of observations.
Among the 341 sample respondents who are members of the fishermen’s associations (Table 4), the majority (297 or 87%) of them expressed that they are active in their organization. The majority comprise 84 (24.6%) that are somewhat active, 209 (61.3%) that are very active, and 4 (1.2%) that are leaders. The respondent’s activities in which they participate in the priority organization were also taken into account. Members of the fishermen’s associations NARIA and STFA are actively participating voluntarily in the following activities: coastal management, such as clean-up drives and mangrove planting; monthly meetings and special meetings if needed; social gatherings; and training.
Degree of participation of fishermen in the priority organizations
| Level of Participation | Atulayan | Nato | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leader | — | 4 | 4 |
| Very Active | 45 | 164 | 209 |
| Somewhat Active | 12 | 72 | 84 |
| Not Active | 11 | 33 | 44 |
Table 5 shows the level of trust of the respondents measured by trust variables Trust1, Trust2, and Trust3. There were 284 (83%), 247 (72%), and 279 (82%) of the respondents who rated either “strongly trust” or “trust” in Trust1, Trust2 and Trust3, respectively. This shows that most of the fishermen-respondents have mutual trust. This implies that fishermen who are members of the priority associations have high social capital as measured by the trust attitude variables.
Trust attribute of the fishermen (n=341) belonging to the priority organization
| Level of Trust | Trust Variables % | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Trust1 | Trust2 | Trust3 | |
| Strongly trust | 15.5 | 14.7 | 29.0 |
| Trust | 67.7 | 57.8 | 52.8 |
| Undecided | 19.9 | 25.5 | 17.6 |
| Don’t trust | 1.2 | 1.5 | 0.6 |
| Strongly distrust | 0.9 | 0.5 | — |
The results of Spearman’s rank correlation analysis between social capital and participation in fishermen’s organizations are shown in Table 6. The data revealed that the trust variables Trust1, Trust2, and Trust3 are positively correlated with each other, and their correlation coefficients indicate a moderate to strong monotonically increasing relationship, which is significant (p<0.001).
Correlation matrix of trust variables and participation
| Trust1 | Trust2 | Trust3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trust2 | 0.763*** | ||
| Trust3 | 0.305*** | 0.316*** | |
| LPart | 0.115* | 0.170** | 0.018 |
The test used was Spearman’s rank-order correlation.
Significance: ***p<0.001, **p<0.01, *p<0.05
The degree of participation (LPart) of the respondents in fishermen organizations was only significantly correlated with Trust1 (p<0.05) and Trust2 (p<0.01), and the correlation coefficients indicate a weak positive monotonically increasing relationship. This implies that based on the values of the data when there is an increase in participation, trust also tends to increase. When there is more active participation in the fishermen's organization, they will have more trust. Participation in community undertakings promotes the formation of social capital (Coleman, 1988; Woolcock, 2001).
We also explored the hypothesized model of relationships among the trust attitude variables, participation, and its associated exogenous variables through path analysis. The path diagram for this model is displayed in Fig 2. It shows the hypothesized path model of the pattern of relationships among trust attribute variables, participation in priority organizations, and exogenous variables of fishermen. Dependence paths indicate unstandardized path coefficients. The asterisk (*) besides some path coefficients indicates that the association is statistically significant with p<0.05.
The hypothesized path model
Since LPart is not significantly correlated with Trust3, we only considered in the path model the trust attitude (Trust1, Trust2) and LPart as the endogenous variables. The exogenous variables or covariates include FS, HHsize, HHinc, and Res. A limitation of the proposed model is that it does not consider the direct effect or relationship of the exogenous variables (HHsize, HHinc, and FS) with trust variables (Trust1 and Trust2). The variables Res and LPart were assumed to have a direct effect or relationship with the trust variables. Moreover, the proposed path model accounted for the endogenous correlation between the trust variables. We estimated and examined the possible causal linkages between the variables LPart, Trust1, Trust2, HHsize, HHinc, and FS as shown in the path model in Fig. 2.
The results of the path analysis suggested that LPart is a significant indicator of Trust1 and Trust2, while Res and HHsize are significant indicators of LPart. The LPart was positively associated with Trust1 and Trust2. In addition, Res and HHsize are positively correlated with LPart. The goodness-of-fit indices of the path model are RMSE=0.000, SRMR=0.016, CFI=1.000, TLI=1.008, and GFI=0.998, indicating a close fit.
The result of the study implies that the level of participation in priority organizations influences the social capital trust attitude of the respondents. This indicates that higher levels of participation in fishing organizations, the greater trust local residents have, and possibly yield to more cooperative actions within the community. Furthermore, the household size and years of residency of the respondents are positively associated with their level of participation. Encouraging the active involvement of fishermen in organizations and community activities may strengthen social capital, particularly the community’s trust. Building trust is an essential element for having sustainable and resilient fishing communities as well as proper management of coastal resources. This study suggests that local governments can consider creating activities and opportunities that encourage local residents to participate more in several activities. These activities might increase their trust towards each other, which can possibly also increase their efforts for successful MPA management. Trust-based relationship within a community motivates unity, efficient governance, and a sense of connection, creating an environment that promotes the community’s long-term sustainability and success.
This work was supported by the JSPS KAKENHI Grant No. 17H01932. We would like to thank Dr. Y. Morooka and Dr. R. Bradecina.
