To release or not to release? Understanding sawfish release behavior in a global south complex fishery

Abstract

Abstract What socio‐economic, cultural, subjective, or institutional factors might motivate a socially marginalized, economically constrained fisher to voluntarily release a highly valuable catch such as a sawfish? This study looked at fishers' attitudes (ability, willingness, and challenges) toward the live release of Critically Endangered sawfish in Bangladesh. The study findings revealed that while goodwill and cultural beliefs were found to encourage live release, the most frequently mentioned challenges were financial loss, fear of injury, and unintentional gear entanglement among others. A significant difference between willingness (85%–88% of fishers) and actual live release behavior (22%–51%) was found, identifying that the intents are not translating into actions (intention‐action gap). Predictive modeling (78% accuracy) identified motivation type, legal awareness, and perceived barriers influencing factors of release behavior. Decisions to release sawfish were embedded within a complex social–ecological system shaped by intersecting technical, economic, institutional, cultural, and moral forces that constrained or enabled fishers' capacity and willingness to comply with conservation behavior, suggesting a need for a critical shift away from current punitive, enforcement‐focused approaches toward mixed‐method, community‐led, trust/incentive‐based, and culturally grounded strategies to achieve conservation outcomes with a long‐term legacy beyond time‐bound project tenures.